“Time is the bottleneck”

The other day I read a great article from the Journal of Computing in Higher Education.  While I love the journal it’s not a common read for course designers but there are some great gems in there.  The article that caught my attention was “Time is the bottleneck”: A qualitative study exploring why learners drop out of MOOCs by Eriksson, Adawi, and Stöhr.

The research offers some insight on student retention the can be applied beyond just Massively Open Online Courses at universities.  MOOCs clearly have a retention problem with over 90% of learners not completing the courses.  This is due to several reasons that the MOOCs are particularly vulnerable to where traditional university courses are not.  Some of these vulnerabilities also apply to free courses that businesses may run to attract or educate customers.

Time is, of course, is a significant issue, or rather the lack of time on the part of the learners.  As is the free and open nature of the courses.

The researchers interviewed 32 students from two courses with a 4% and a 2% completion rate.  This was a relatively small sample considering the two courses had 9599 and 8977 students enrolled respectively.

The interviews identified several issues.  They included the:

1. Learner’s perception of the course including a mismatch between the expectations and actual content, and the enjoyment of the course.
2. External factors such as the socio-economic factors such as internet access and English proficiency.
3. And by far though they identified the lack of time as the dominant issue.

They also referenced a 2015 study that had identified eight factors.

1. High workload
2. Challenging course content
3. Lack of time.
4. Lack of pressure or urgency to complete a free course
5. Lack of awareness of features
6. Social influence
7. Long course start-up (long wait until the course starts)
8. Learning on demand (which referred to going in getting what they needed and leaving).
9. The Eriksson, Adawi, and Stöhr research showed some overlap but they did not see the lack of urgency as an issue or the learning on demand issue.

So how can this information be leveraged by course designers? Here are some practical tips.

1. Ensure potential students have as much information regarding the course content, difficulty, and learning objectives before they sign up for a course.
2. Watch not just for cognitive overload but calendar overload.  Chunk content as much as possible and build in places for learners to come and go as they need.  Also, ensure that it is possible for learners to leave and return to where they left off with as little friction as possible.  Keep videos short and text broken into smaller segments.
3. Consider options for slow or intermittent internet access such as downloading or syncing to a mobile device.
4. Consider making your courses self-paced when possible.
5. And of course.  Keep your content fun and interesting.

It’s an easy to read article and if you have the time or are creating free courses I recommend seeking it out.

Eriksson, T., Adawi, T., & Stöhr, C. (2017). “Time is the bottleneck”: a qualitative study exploring why learners drop out of MOOCs. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 29(1), 133–146. http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s12528-016-9127-8