Although Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are increasing in popularity, they have been subject to criticism due to the high dropout rate. This study examined the impact of an instructor's personalized email intervention on the rate of completion of a nine week course, which included seven weekly quizzes, and the rate of completion of the final exam. The participants, who took an Israeli noncredit academic MOOC on negotiation management, were randomly assigned to two groups. Treatment group participants (N = 576) who did not complete the weekly quiz received a tailored reminder by email from their instructor encouraging them to complete the quiz and offering them assistance in order to deal with the past week’s contents. The control group (N = 608) that did not complete the weekly quiz did not get any emails from the instructor. The impact of the intervention was measured in three different ways: the immediate-impact, the delayed-impact and a cumulative impact. The increase in quiz completion within a week after the instructor's email was defined as an immediate-impact. The increase in the completion of the next quiz was defined as a delayed impact. The increase in the final exam completion rates was defined as a cumulative impact. The results show that the weekly intervention had an immediate impact as well as a cumulative impact on the final exam completion rate. The results suggest that an instructor's acknowledgement and interest might increase learners' commitment to learning in a MOOC. This study aimed to gain insight into learners' propensity to stay active in a MOOC and to increase completion rates. Findings of this study can be useful to MOOC designers and instructors to design and facilitate more effective MOOCs for learners by using email interventions to prevent students from dropping out of courses.

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), growing in number in recent years, occupy a significant place as an open educational resource, and provide insights into the development process as well as offer an innovative educational experience. This reflective article examines insights gathered during the development and offering of two sessions of a Negotiation Management MOOC. The article reviews the development process of the course which is built as a series of situations that simulate real-life moments. The episodes are displayed in a mini case format, based on the principle of sitcoms and the 'edutainment' (educational entertainment) approach. The video clips combine the simulations with the lecturer's analysis, using theories, models, and concepts from their course and training. This is intended to produce a strong emotional engagement in the course content and to motivate the students to continue learning. The developmental stages raised pedagogical questions around content and training, relating to the length of the video clips, interactive learning, and communication. Those stages are presented in the first part of this article. In addition, in its second part, the article offers insights from two target audiences as reported in the student experience reports. The surveys refer to the teaching method, the length of the videos, interactive learning and the unique integration of lecturers and actors in the videos. The student surveys and the lecturer's perspective give insights concerning course development and teaching approach for the Edutainment MOOC approach. These insights will assist other MOOC development and teaching teams, specifically soft skill MOOCs.

The ability to replay selected video segments is a major advantage of online video lectures. Replay is a learning instance that reflects active engagement. This paper develops the ‘replay-peak attention chart’ as a new performance measure of learner’s attention, based on the control chart concept, which is used for Statistical Process Control (SPC) in operations management. This study follows the design science research paradigm and employs a mixed methods methodology, combining quantitative learning analytics with qualitative analysis of notable segment replay instances by viewers of online video lectures. An analysis of a successful Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), titled “Negotiation Management” provides a proof-of-concept for the replay-peak attention chart, as a visual heuristic tool for identifying notable learning instances. The MOOC includes Educational Entertainment (edutainment) in the form of negotiation simulations which are presented as sitcoms, and are meant to increase learner engagement. From an attention economy perspective, the replay-peak attention chart may help instructors and designers to focus their limited attention resources on segments of online video lecture sessions that may require pedagogical interventions. This paper critically discusses the replay-peak attention chart conceptualization and its initial proof-of-concept. It suggests future research directions for substantiating the replay-peak attention chart, and investigating the effect of edutainment on online learning. The replay-peak attention chart is a dynamic descriptive performance measure, which has a promising potential to improve the design of effective online video lectures as an e-learning resource.

No abstract