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The SIRET Training Platform: Facing
the Dropout Phenomenon of MOOC
Environments
Sergio Miranda, Giuseppina Rita Mangione, Francesco
Orciuoli, Vincenzo Loia and Saverio Salerno
Abstract: The SIRET project aims at the definition of a recruiting and training integrated system able to represent the
professional competences of users and to understand the supplies and demands in order to find optimal agreements
in the job market. In this scenario, a crowd of users is looking for new professional competences able to give them
new opportunities. Of course, these many learners may have common learning goals but very different knowledge
backgrounds. For all aspects related to the training, we are realising a MOOC platform that aims to address this
requirement and simultaneously face one of the main MOOC problems: the dropout. The cause is the difficulty to
guarantee the provision of one-to-one tutoring for many learners. The proposed training platform, in particular, exploits
the adaptation and personalisation features of IWT to mitigate this cited problem.
Introduction
Progress in the development of Massive Open Online
Courses (MOOC) is compelling universities to re-evaluate
their formative offers by exploring new educational
methods (Yuan & Powell, 2013) able to value massive
models and flexible learning paths to hold up lifelong and
adult learning (Vazquez et al., 2012). The most common
method of education is the ‘monitorial method’ where the
teacher should “fill students’ heads with knowledge and
provide them with the information that they needed in
order to improve cognitive and metacognitive process”
(Bloom, 1956). Moreover, “regressive pedagogy” (Siemens
et al., 2013) is abundant in MOOCs that emphasise
a teacher-centred approach difficult to transpose into
online learning environments. MOOC design should thus
benefit a learner-centred approach and provide strategies
that change the perception of learners as active
participants in the establishment of individual goals and
a personal trajectory. In the MOOC environment this
kind of control is imbalanced to the students who feel isolated
in the process of choosing courses, closed to their
learning needs and work objectives. Moreover, students
also perceive that they have to play the role of monitoring
their progress with respect to calendars, fruition and assessment
results.
What the students look for in the MOOC environment
is mainly to enrich professional competences and
earn formative credits and certifications, improving their
employment prospects. This motivation supports both
empowerment and engagement, but leaves the learner
to control him/herself, deciding what time to allocate to
study and choose what to learn from a formative offer
or a set of suggestions automatically driven by previous
selections (Mangione, 2013). However, the statistics do
not correlate with this (Chapman & King, 2005): there is
a high level of desertion, poor results and few final certificates
are issued.
This is why this disengagement of ‘non-completing’ students
is the subject matter of this research. A positive
starting engagement is often followed by “but not earning
a statement of accomplishment” (Holohan et al., 2005).
There are two main reasons for this. Firstly it is difficult to
guarantee a teaching presence in courses with thousands
of learners of differing experience and knowledge who
require continuous one-to-one guidance in order to orient
themselves to different learning goals, real needs and
how to fill their skill gap (Anderson et al., 2005). Secondly,
families with financial difficulties “look to MOOCs as a
way to offset high tuition rates” (Park and Lee, 2003), but
few organisations issue formative credits on MOOC completion.
For example, the American Council on Education
only recognises credits issued for five Coursera MOOCs
(Lederman, 2013). Intrinsic motivation clearly decreases
and students leave courses with no useful certificates or
credits (Kolowich, 2013).
The problem of useful credits is related to quality and
assessment methods for a meaningful learning process,
considering objectives and providing feedback for the
construction of individual learning paths. The learners
need new educational environments for MOOCs in a new
“heutagogic” view (Ausubel, 1962), where adaptive tutoring
methodologies are welcome and able to overcome the
‘one size fits all’ approach.
In (Gaeta et al., 2011 and Chapman & King, 2005) differentiating
learning is a point of view of teaching rather
than a method. It is an educational culture able to recognise
diversities inside a classroom. Adaptive learning is
an innovative research field synchronised with the guidelines,
research funding of Horizon2020 and evolutionary
trends of the learning technologies. We are moving from
the ‘Scholè’ (metaphor for ‘learning for the elite’) to the
‘Schooling’ (metaphor for ‘learning for all’) by reformulating
learning events as dialogue processes (Tizzi, 2008)
and approaching the obvious problems of paying atten-
Research Track | 107