Engagement Metrics and Online Course Completion: A Mobile-Centric Data-Driven Study

Abstract

It has been witnessed that post-COVID there has been a rapid expansion of online education, that has heightened the need to understand learner engagement and its influence on course completion, especially in a mobile-first digital landscape. This is a data-driven study that explores key engagement metrics such as time spent on courses, number of videos watched, quizzes taken, and quiz scores to evaluate their impact on the completion rates of online courses. The dataset has been referred from health, arts, science, and programming for over 5,000 user records. This study investigates how behavioral patterns and device types, particularly mobile phone usage, affect learner success. The study employs descriptive and comparative analytics to measure the relationships between engagement indicators and completion outcomes. Variables like course category, time spent on course, and device type are analyzed alongside performance metrics such as completion rate and quiz scores. The findings show that higher engagement through interactive content, especially video consumption and quiz participation, is significantly associated with improved completion rates. Learners accessing courses via mobile devices exhibited distinct engagement behaviors that suggest the importance of mobile-optimized learning strategies. This study is applied in a global context, and we have applied publicly available anonymized data to analyze results and offer actionable insights for educational platforms, instructional designers, and policymakers aiming to enhance learner retention and success in online learning environments.