Christian Guetl Ph.D who represents to the Graz University of Technology, Austria in the MOOC-Maker project, visited 4 universities in Australia (January-February 2016) during a research carried out in this country; RMIT in Melbourne and UWA, Curtin University and Murdoch University in Perth. Dr. Guetl gave a seminar on MOOCs attrition and retention in the context of MOOC Maker. In each of the presentations attended between 20 and 30 researchers. Based on this dissemination activity, RMIT and Curtin University signed up as associated partners in the MOOC Maker project.
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have become one of the new hypes in e-education. Educators and educational institutions are grappling with this new and powerful learning concept that has attracted thousands of learners. This new way of learning has no or lower entry barriers, and it can bring diverse and international group of learners together. Educators and educational institutions might also find the very high drop-out rates of more than 90% alarming. This talk investigates the reasons of such high dropout rates. Findings from literature and experimentation for the study reveal that attrition may be grouped into two classes. The first is classed as ‘healthy’ attrition, which concerns a group of learners who are selectively picking content of courses. The second class named as ‘unhealthy’ attrition, subsumes all students initially wanting to finish a MOOC but fails for various reasons. In the course of this talk, an integrated model for attrition and retention, user analysis and behavior prediction as well as study results are going presented and discussed. Findings are based on and linked to the European research project MOOC Maker.
