Participation and non-participation in open online courses – what motivates and supports engagement in online learning?

To fit modern lifestyles and the learners’ personal needs for flexibility and easy access to education, educational institutions need to develop new formats for higher and further education. In Denmark, five institutions have carried out a large scale pilot project, aiming to develop and test new educational formats. The five institutions have offered an open online, MOOC-inspired course designed for both continuing professional development and degree programs within social education and teaching. The course ran in 2 iterations in 2017 with a total of 576 enrollments.

All participants were invited to complete two online questionnaires as an entry and exit survey. The exit survey included specific questions investigating the reasons why some of the enrolled participants did not engage in the course. A large number of the respondents registered but did not participate in the course, which makes the data set highly interesting.

Based on the survey data we have carried out a study of the participants’ pre-course motivations and expectations for learning online, and post-course of their experiences of participating in an open online course. In the study we focus on: 1. What motivates participants to attend online education? In particular, what supports positive experiences with online education that maybe will make participants choose this format again in the future; and 2. How may the open online course (including materials and interactions with tutors and/or other participants) connect to participants’ work and/or study life? What factors in the course design support (or not) this connection for the participants?