Share Paper: Best of Ireland: A curious case of persistent learners: insight into serial MOOC participation

1. Conchúr Mac Lochlainn, Dublin City University, Ireland
2. Mairéad Nic Giolla Mhichíl, Dublin City University, Ireland
3. Elaine Beirne, Dublin City University, Ireland
4. Mark Brown, Dublin City University, Ireland

Abstract: Why do learners join MOOCs? This is a straightforward question which underpins many MOOC studies. It also leads to two related but distinct questions: firstly, who are MOOC learners? Secondly, what are their goals and motivations in undertaking a MOOC (e.g Wang and Baker, 2018, Kizilcec and Schneider, 2015, Ferguson and Clow, 2015)? This research has been built on the reasonable assumption that understanding learner participation, and what kind of patterns may be implicit in learner continuation, are key, given the frequently sharp drop out of participation observed in MOOCs (Jordan, 2015). This study will report on a survey placed ...