Rings of engagement: A Model for MOOC enrollment

Abstract

This article presents a new model for MOOC enrollment, called " Rings of Engagement, " to address the issue of the extreme attrition rate in the current MOOC enrollment model. While the current MOOC enrollment model considers the total number of enrolled participants in a MOOC as the final number of enrolled learners, our model has three circles of learners' enrollment, based on learners' learning needs. We argue that by creating three different circles of learners' enrollment, we can keep track of learners' performances and attrition rates in each circle to assess the effectiveness of MOOCs. Both criticisms and celebrations of massive open online courses (MOOCs) have been heavily dominated by the issue of learners' participation, engagement, and completion. When the initial stage of the hype cycle of MOOCs was complete, even its advocates were worried about the attrition rate of MOOCs. For instance, addressing this concern, Udacity founder and former Stanford professor Sebastian Thrun said in a 2103 interview: "We were on the front pages of newspapers and magazines, and at the same time, I was realizing, we don't educate people as others wished, or as I wished. We have a lousy product" (Chafkin, 2013, p. 1). Echoing the concerns of faculty across the board, Eileen Landy, Secretary of United University Professions, said " We are concerned that there is an experiment being done on students and we don't know the