Boosting students’ achievement rate on MOOCs

Abstract

[EN] This work is related to the tracks “Education and Teaching Sciences” and “Public policies, governance and sustainability” and is part of an Educational Innovation and Improvement Project developed at the UPV. Our analysis is the first step to apply strategies that could improve the learning involvement of students in two EDx-UPV MOOCs: "Strategy and innovation in public administrations" and "Public policies and accountability", which are offered separately or together as a Professional Certificate. These are courses in which the enrollment is very high but few students finish them completely, for this reason we converted a first long one into two shorter. The completion rate has been slightly increased and the dropout rate decreased, however, we need a higher student retention. Based on the review of questionnaires proposed by the literature and surveys from previous editions, other surveys have been proposed in this edition aimed at finding out the reasons that lead them to complete the course, as well as the difficulties encountered in its execution. Based on this information, we observe that the satisfaction of those who finish is very high, but a greater motivation and involvement of the student is necessary through communication, interaction and direct feedback with the teacher, and among the students themselves, both on the course platform and through social networks.