Learning to Learn Online MOOC

Athabasca University (Canada) have released the preliminary results from their latest Learning to Learn Online course. This is a five week free "MOOC" about study skills, with an optional certificate of completion. As with other free courses, only a very small proportion of the students who enroll go on to complete (8% in 2016). However, it is easy to enroll in such a course and there is no penalty for non-completion and so this completion rate is not a useful measure. Just over half (52%) of the students who enrolled signed into the course. If only those students are considered, the completion rate doubles to 16%. A further indication of students who are actively involved is those who posted to course forums, of whom 40% completed the course, which is a typical figure for conventional small group, for-fee, distanced education courses. However, this course had five staff supporting only 265 active students (53 students per instructor), so is this really a Massive Open On-line Course, or just an ordinary distance education course, which happens to be free?

Learning to Learn Online Course results
	2015	2016	Increase	% 2016
Enrolled	1825	1262	-563
Signed into the course	916	655	-261	52%
Completed/Passed	148	106	-42	8%
Downloaded a certificate	143	98	-45	8%
Discussion messages	3099	1781	-1318
Messages by facilitators	1284	192	-1092
Messages by students	1815	1589	-226
Students who posted	310	265	-45	21%
Pre-course surveys* completed	487	289	-198	23%
User Experience surveys* completed	120	68	-52	5%
Female, pre-course	67%	65%	-0.02
Female, completed	70%	68%	-0.02
English first language, pre-course	63%	70%	0.07
English first language, completed	65%	74%	0.09
Holding no degree	28%	28%	0
College/undergraduate degree	31%	31%	0
Graduate student or above	41%	41%	0