An Attrition Model for MOOCs: Evaluating the Learning Strategies of Gamification

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have dramatically expanded online learning opportunities, and many institutions have made considerable efforts to develop and promote such courses. However, they have failed to produce evidence of their influence on the future of higher education. One of the major recurring issues is the consistently high dropout rate of MOOC learners. In this paper, we review the existing literature on MOOC dropout rates and we analyze the attrition and retention factors, the open online learner group classification and the funnel of involvement in an open learning setting. Furthermore, this study provides results from two courses given by the Telescope Project (an initiative similar to Coursera or Edx) at Galileo University. We make a comparative analysis between the conventional learning method used in the first MOOC (introduction of e-learning) and the gamified learning method used in the second MOOC (authoring tools for e-learning).