Abstract
The past two years have seen rapid development of massive open online courses
(MOOCs) with the rise of a number of MOOC platforms. The scale of enrolment and
participation in the earliest mainstream MOOC courses has garnered a good deal of
media attention. However, data about how the enrolment and completion figures have
changed since the early courses is not consistently released. This paper seeks to draw
together the data that has found its way into the public domain in order to explore
factors affecting enrolment and completion. The average MOOC course is found to
enroll around 43,000 students, 6.5% of whom complete the course. Enrolment numbers
are decreasing over time and are positively correlated with course length. Completion
rates are consistent across time, university rank, and total enrolment, but negatively
correlated with course length. This study provides a more detailed view of trends in
enrolment and completion than was available previously, and a more accurate view of
how the MOOC field is developing.
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