Abstract—The open nature of MOOCs poses new challenges for educators to engage students in their learning. It defies the traditional classroom bound learning and demands new measures to be taken that would help keep students engaged in the course. This paper studies the enrolment data of three MOOCs offered on Future Learn in 2013/14 and identifies that at any given day in its lifecycle the highest number of students leave the course on the very first day they join it. Hence, it proposes strategies such as buddying, feedback, briefing and incentives to facilitate students to stay on board and engage with the course for maximum benefit possible.

Index Terms—Distance education, e-learning, MOOCs dropout rates, MOOCs engagement.

Usman Nazir is with University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton, UK, and Institute of Business Administration, Karachi, Pakistan.
Hugh Davis, Lisa Harris are with University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton, UK.

Cite: Usman Nazir, Hugh Davis, Lisa Harris, " First Day Stands Out as Most Popular Among MOOC Leavers," International Journal of e-Education, e-Business, e-Management and e-Learning vol. 5, no. 3, pp.173-179, 2015.