openSAP: Learner Behavior and Activity in Self-Paced Enterprise MOOCs

Abstract

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been a subject of research since 2012, especially in the context of professional development and workplace learning due to their flexible schedule and format, which is a prerequisite for on the job learning. But MOOCs often do not fulfill the promise of flexible learning as it is only possible to achieve a certificate during the course runtime. An unpredictable workload and thus a lack of time often results in not showing up to a course or dropping out during the course runtime. Therefore, some platform content remains accessible even after the course runtime in self-paced mode. These courses differ from live courses as participants still can access all of the content and the discussion forum in read-only mode, but are not able to take the graded assignments and exams which are a prerequisite to achieving a certificate at the end of a course. Even though it is only possible by paying a fee to earn a graded certificate for these self-paced courses, we identified a high share of additional enrollments after the course end that suggests there is still interest from participants. Nevertheless, learning behavior in self-paced courses has not been a major subject of research, yet. This work contributes to closing this research gap by exploring the learner behavior in self-paced courses. The results show tendencies of more time-efficiency and engagement of self-paced learners under certain conditions and pave the way for further research and practical applications.