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Analyzing completion rates in the First French xMOOC
Matthieu Cisel
ous expectations and constraints of MOOC participants.
Those who had little time to spend on the course could
follow the basic certificate, and those who wanted to learn
more could follow the advanced certificate. The course
provided quizzes, weekly assignments and a final examination.
To obtain the basic certificate, it was required to
complete the quizzes and the exam with a minimum of
280 points out of 400. The deadline for these quizzes was
set to the last day of the course. These quizzes were mostly
based on content recall although a few calculus applications
were also included.
In order to obtain the advanced certificate, participants
were required to pass the basic one and submit at least
three assignments out of four. They also had to reach a
minimal score of 560 points out of 800. Out of these 800
points, 200 could be gained through quizzes, 200 through
the exam, and 400 through assignments. Each assignment
could bring a maximum of 100 points. Those assignments
were based on a case study and assessed through peer
evaluation. Learners could take part in the evaluation process
only if they had submitted the corresponding assignment.
There was no time limit for peer assessment and
learners did not gain any points by taking part in the process.
Final marks were attributed by a team of teaching
assistants based on the marks and comments previously
left by assessors. Some new discussion threads were initiated
every week, by the MOOC staff only, and monitored
closely during the duration of the course.
In addition to a wiki, many resources provided information
on the course and on associated tools, such as
tutorials and FAQs. The type of certificate obtained will
hereafter be referred to as “achievement”. Similarly, the
type of certificate initially aimed at by learners in the initial
survey will be referred to as “personal aim”. Based on
achievements and personal aim, we designed an ‘achievement
gap’ score. We qualify the score as negative when
the achievement lies below the personal aim, and positive
in the opposite case. It is considered as null when it corresponds
to the personal aim. Furthermore, if the participant
does not obtain a certificate and did not aim at it, the
score is null as well.
Out of the 3495 participants who registered, 1332
(38.1 %) obtained a certificate. Among those who obtained
a certificate, 894 (67.1 %) got the basic certificate
only, and 438 (32.9 %) the advanced certificate. Among
registered participants, 466 (13.4 %) did not go beyond
the registration process. They will be referred to as “noshow”.
1697 (48.5%) were active, but did not obtain any
certificate. They will be referred to as Non completers, they
include both dropouts and auditing learners.
Student activity reports, gradebooks and survey responses
used for this study were downloaded from the platform.
Activity reports provide data on resources or discussion
threads visited by the participants; timestamps or
time spent on each resource were not available for every
log. Therefore it was not possible to carry out any analysis
based on time. Regarding the peer evaluation process,
marks given by assessors and associated comments were
extracted for all assignments. Participants were asked to
fill in a survey at the beginning of the course. Out of the
3029 registered participants who went beyond the registration
process, 74.3 % filled in this survey, on which
subsequent analysis on demographics are based. 100%
of those who obtained the advanced certificate, 98.5%
of those who obtained the basic certificate, and 63.0%
of Non completers filled in the survey. IP addresses were
not collected, therefore all available data on geographical
origin comes from surveys. Regarding the use of videos,
some analytics were provided by YouTube but they could
not be associated to analytics from Canvas. Anonymised
data was analyzed with the open source statistical software
R 2.12 (Team, 2012). In the subsequent analysis,
chi-square test was used in order to identify statistically
significant associations between survey data and levels of
completion.
Results
Course Demographics
In terms of course demographics, 68 % of learners were
male, and the average age as a whole was 34.7 (± standard
deviation = 10.0) years. Among participants, 14.3 % were
students, 13.4 % had lower supervisory and technical occupations,
13.7 % were job seekers and 52.2 % had higher
managerial and professional occupations. Most participants
lived in France (60.6 %). Still, some learners came
from many other countries, mostly from African countries
where French is an official language, such as Burkina Faso
(6.2 %), Senegal (5.2 %), Morocco (4.7 %), or Ivory Coast
(3 %). For the purpose of this analysis, these countries
were classified based on their Human Development Index
(HDI), on the basis of information provided by the United
Nations Development Program (UNDP, 2012). HDI
ranged from low to very high, with medium and high as
intermediate values. Among learners who completed the
survey, 66.7 % came from countries with a very high HDI,
3.7 % from countries with a high HDI, 5.4 % from countries
with a medium HDI and 24.2 % from countries with
a low HDI. Among participants from countries with a low
HDI, 10.3 % were students, 19.1 % had lower supervisory
and technical occupations, 16.9 % were job seekers, and
44.6 % had higher managerial and professional occupations.
Available data
Objectives, achievements and
constraints
Research Track | 27