Effect of free certificate discontinuation in completion rates of MOOC
Despujol, Ignacio M. · Turró, Carlos · Castañeda, Linda · Busquets, Jaime

PublishedMay 2017
Conference5th European MOOCs Stakeholders Summit, EMOOCs 2017, Madrid, Spain, May 22-26, 2017, Digital Education: Out to the World and Back to the Campus
SeriesLecture Notes in Computer Science
Edition 1, Volume 10254, Pages 182-187
PublisherSpringer International Publishing
EditorsKloos, Carlos Delgado · Jermann, Patrick · Pérez-Sanagustín, Mar · Seaton, Daniel T. · White, Su
CountrySpain, Europe

ABSTRACT
Completion rates have been a controversial topic since Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) became mainstream in 2012. In January 2016, based in previous trials, edx.org discontinued the free honor code certificate for new courses, trying to increase the number of verified certificates sold. After one year we have studied the effects of this measure in completion rates and verified certification rates over enrollments for 24 UPValenciaX courses offered in 2015 and 2016 (199,278 enrollments in total), finding that there has been a modest global increase in verified certification rates and a strong decline in completion rates for all the courses. For exactly the same courses, the completion rate for all courses has practically halved going from 10.5{%} in 2015 to 5.6{%} and the total verified certification rate has been multiplied by 1.4 going from 0.7{%} to 1{%}, what is a significant relative improvement but it is not enough to achieve sustainability.

Keywords free certificate · massive open online course · MOOC · motivation

Published atMadrid
ISBN978-3-319-59044-8
RefereedYes
Rights© Springer International Publishing AG 2017
DOI10.1007/978-3-319-59044-8_21
URLhttps://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-59044-8_21
Export optionsBibTex · EndNote · Tagged XML · Google Scholar


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