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Two really significant challenges for MOOC management is ensuring that learners are actively participating on a course all the way through to the end.  These are the lessons we learned through our own experiences of MOOC teaching that relate to participation and completion.

1. Consider your target audience(s) when setting the launch/start date of your course.
2. Required time for MOOCs and specific activities is hard to estimate upfront, but important for your learners.

3. Different course tracks/pathways to reach different levels of knowledge are appreciated, but may lead to confusion as well. Different tracks/pathways must be clearly structured for learners.

4. It is also difficult to reach an adequate level of “strictness” with deadlines (soft vs. hard deadlines) to not scare off learners. Do you want to grant soft deadline to make it easier for learners with busy schedules, or do you go for strict deadlines to award those which take the deadlines serious?
5. It is important to not only promote enrolment, but also participation/completion from the beginning, presenting learners with benefits/take-aways of completing the whole course.
6. However, some learners do not come with the intention to complete the MOOC, for example, they might just be interested in a particular section/week of the course, or in “lurking” (e.g. to see how the MOOC is done)
7. It is important for learners to be able to track their progress in a course. It also provides the course creators with information about how the course was being used (note, this is only possible if learners have to sign-in for the course and consent to be tracked).
8. Well-designed, “ice-breaking” activities are key for active participation and learner engagement. Learners can get to know each other and connect more quickly (in a set timed MOOC, not applicable for a self-paced MOOC).
9. Learning in teams/teamwork can be a challenge (online and face-to-face), because of differing levels of activity, knowledge and engagement (e.g. free-rider problem). Moderation helps for less active learners, but hardly turns inactive users into active ones. It is critical how the assignment and assessment is designed (e.g. peer-review within and between teams). Next, teamwork is also difficult for self-paced MOOCs – does one monitor forums for month after month, or just offer active forum contributions from moderators during a set time?
10. Languages: Sometimes (especially in certain regions) this can be a challenge. It can be a trade-off between facilitating access for more people (by providing several languages), but at the same time decreasing the cross-cultural exchange within the MOOC (by having separate language communities).
11. Multi-lingual courses require a lot of additional resources (not only translation of content, also multi-lingual moderation, platform and course design, technical support etc.). Publishing content with an open license offers the opportunity for translation into other languages.
12. Localising a MOOC by offering opportunities to reflect on the local context of the learners, for example, by designing activities where participants share local examples, makes content more relevant and potentially more engaging.
13. Certificates are motivating for some learners, for others not (approximately 50:50 over all MOOCs). If the certificate is officially recognized by a company or university, this number significantly increases.
14. Be careful with mandatory participation (e.g. if you force students or employees to take a MOOC). If you did want all employees to participate in a MOOC, provide them real incentives to do so (e.g. provide them time).

Convenience

It’s important to offer your learners a sense of convenience in terms of when and where they study.

• Apply an easy and convenient sign-up procedure. This might be another criteria for choosing your platform.
• If the MOOC is facilitated and run in set time, respect your target audience´s schedule. It is especially important to provide clear advice on the:
  • length of the MOOC, each section and the estimated time activities shall take;
    • when you should start and finish your MOOC (timing of the whole MOOC);
    • when you will publish new content. When scheduling this consider business schedules, working/free time, weekends, holidays etc.

• Run a pre-course survey and consider expectations and 
  prior knowledge of your learners, as this also influences the success rate and the estimated required time to participate in the MOOC. For example, if the knowledge gap is too large to start the course effectively, offer some additional material and refer to other courses to help scaffold leaners effectively.
• If supported by the platform, offer flexibility to your learners with different course paths:
  • Define minimum participation requirements;
  • Scan your MOOC and mark “must-have” content and “nice-to-have” content to help your learners with limited time to complete the essential components of the course;
  • Consider offering a “fast track” which comes with a minimum certificate;
  • Provide different opportunities for deepening one’s understanding of complexity of the subject;
  • Offer a range of next steps aimed at different levels or contexts.

• Provide (realistic) estimated workloads for the modules and activities so that learners can plan their contributions.
• Try to strike a balance between being strict vs. flexible, for example with exam deadlines for a business audience. Moreover, we would not suggest to grant too much time for an assignment or task (e.g. 5 hours for a peer-review which takes only 30 min.), as this can be misunderstood and scare off your learners. Keep expectations realistic!

Communication

It’s also important to think about how you communicate with your learners.

• Promote course enrolment, but do not forget to also promote course participation and completion.
• Be clear about how you will communicate with participants at the start of course.
• Send reminders to learners on a regular (e.g. weekly) basis.
• If you start with regular reminders, ensure that you stick to your communication policy until the end of the MOOC. Your learners will get used to it, rely on it and appreciate this.
• Be concise and easy-to-follow with instructions and descriptions, especially when it comes to deadlines and group work requirements.
• Stimulate your learners with easy and fun “ice-breaking” activities. Once your learners became visible, it is much more likely that they will stay active in your MOOC.
• Provide overviews/summaries for each module/week, but focus on the outcomes of the discussion, what was new/new content/interesting points from forum discussions/areas of the course people found difficult and/or activities/conclusions. Do not summarize the task descriptions or regurgitate content already available in the MOOC.
• Depending on platform functionality, enable learners to track their progress and motivate themselves appropriately. This gives a better overview, motivates and also provides the course creator with information about how the course was being used.
• Ongoing feedback at the end of learning milestones or sections/weeks help to keep learners motivated and engaged.
• There should be a clear indicator of progress in the MOOC for the learner after each module/course section.
• Consider an official closing event (if not self-paced): especially when offering MOOCs over a longer period with active user participation. When offering such an event, we recommend:
  • considering the form of the closing event (for example a hot seat (http://dbp.theatredance.utexas.edu/content/hotseating-0), but always include different ways of participation for learners, e.g. in an online hang-out, YouTube livestream, in a chat forum, etc.)
  • communicating the date and purpose at the beginning of the MOOC;
  • preparing your own inputs (e.g., share outtakes of the video recording, some background stories (what happened behind the scenes), etc.) and leave room for your learners to feedback;
  • offering a Social Media follow-up exchange place, e.g. a LinkedIn Group or other networks, if appropriate.
• Encourage your learners to become co-creators of your MOOC and potentially create a ‘community’ around your course, by:
  • inviting learners to design specific activities/assignments (see good practice) or use material/resources developed by learners during the MOOC in future iterations (you will need make it clear in the introduction to the MOOC that this will happen, how these will be licensed and enable people to opt out, etc.);
  • initiate stimulating discussions;
  • acknowledging their level of expertise and experiences;
  • asking for their feedback and opinions;
  • and by not answering every discussion/question in the forum. In some cases, fellow learners responded to questions and subsequently became “co-mentors” of the course. Be more reflective and engaging instead of assuming that you as the course creator are the only expert on the topic.

Community

It can be really important to create a sense of teamwork and camaraderie among MOOC learner cohorts.

• Carefully design group selection process and criteria:
  • Bottom-Up vs. Top-Down: let the participants choose/suggest co-learners for their group who they already know from discussions according to preferences/sympathies/similar thinking vs. an automatic group building via fixed criteria (e.g. time-zone, languages, topic, time budget etc.).
  • Be aware that bottom-up instigated teams could be time intensive and require a high level of responsibility from your learners; typically, only very few, highly-engaged learners will do this.
• Create the teams as early as possible in the MOOC to enhance a sense of belonging.  It’s important to be aware though, that if you assign groups at a later stage in your MOOC, a lot of inactive learners may already have dropped out (self-selection) and the ones which have stayed the course are more likely to stay active in the group work.
• Design the collaborative activities for a team of MOOC participants carefully; they should be engaging and output related. Also counteract for possible fee-riding (e.g. with a peer-reviewing scheme) and facilitate possible meetings in person (e.g. by using same location as one criteria for grouping teams)
• Strengthen the discussion part, and make it as user-friendly as possible (with moderation, overviews, etc.)
• Strengthen the role of moderators / mentors (e.g. by official introduction at the beginning of the teamwork, establishing common rules, etc.)
• Complement online groups with Social Media interactions, e.g. by providing a personal message tool (or profile link to LinkedIn account)
• Complement online groups with offline meeting options: for this, geographical proximity must be a criterion for building the teams.

Credit

Finally, certification or accreditation can be an important motivation for some students.

• Badges and/or a certificate of participation could motivate approximately 50% of your learners. Yet different participants have different needs and preferences. A student could be interested in a certificate she/he can use at her/his university, while an employee might be interested in a certificate for career-related motives.
• Various kinds of certificates coupled to various course-tracks might help motivation, but might also complicate the delivery of the MOOC. Find the right balance between motivation, flexibility, the needs of your target group and simplicity.
• A formal course recognition with ECTS (European Credit Transfer System) or similar motivates and increases learner engagement/interest with the course.
  • For recognition etc., you can also explore our discussion paper (http://bizmooc.eu/papers/certification/) on recognition and certification of MOOCs.
  • Consider whether your MOOC could potentially become an element of a certified larger programme (e.g. a regular ECTS-based university offer, an official company training programme or even part of a Micro-Credential)