Content or platform: Why do students complete MOOCs? – LO

In this paper, authors attempt to assess some of the motivations that learners bring to a MOOC course offered
through Coursera, one of the primary xMOOC hosting platforms, and then study whether these
motivations play an important role in whether a student completes a course or not.

In doing so, authors both investigate classical motivational variables – such as mastery goals and self-efficacy – and motivations that may be more specific to the context of MOOCs and the contemporary societal interest in MOOCs.
Authors study these issues by correlating motivational measures given in a beginning-of-course survey to
platform data on student course completion. Answering this question will help the reader to better understand
whether the low rate of course completion seen in most MOOCs is reason for concern, or whether it is a
natural result of the motivations that learners bring to their use of MOOCs.