Planning prompts increase and forecast course completion in massive open online courses
Open accessAbstract
Among all of the learners in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) who intend to complete a course, the majority fail to do so. This intention-action gap is found in many domains of human experience, and research in similar goal pursuit domains suggests that plan-making is a cheap and effective nudge to encourage follow-through. In a natural field experiment in three HarvardX courses, some students received open-ended planning prompts at the beginning of a course. These prompts increased course completion by 29%, and payment for certificates by 40%. This effect was largest for students enrolled in traditional schools. Furthermore, the contents of students' plans could predict which students were least likely to succeed - in particular, students whose plans focused on specific times were unlikely to complete the course. Our results suggest that planning prompts can help learners adopted productive frames of mind at the outset of a learning goal that encourage and forecast student success.
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The plan making intervention increased short-term persistence but did not increase course completion.
“While this intervention increased shortterm persistence, it did not increase course completion, which was previously found (Yeomans and Reich, 2017).”
From Using personalized support & school-based study groups to increase teachers’ participation in MOOCs: Findings from two European pilot projects (2021) · cites this paper as Yeomans and Reich, 2017
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References 47 · Cited by 61
- Authors
- Yeomans, M., & Reich, J.
- Affiliations
- Harvard University (US)
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the Seventh International Learning Analytics & Knowledge Conference
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2017-03-13
- Pages
- 464-473
- OpenAlex
- W2592491576
- Cited by
- 61
- References
- 47
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 13 · 2020: 5 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 7
- FWCI
- 4.29
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- hdl.handle.net
- Licence
- Locations
- International Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge (LAK) (publishedVersion)
- DSpace@MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Science Applications › Online Learning and Analytics
- Social Sciences › Education › Online and Blended Learning
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
- Keywords
- course completion, MOOCs, intention-behavior gap, planning process, nudging, student performance prediction, learning objectives, goal pursuit, MOOC completion rates
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