Achieving Five Times the Retention in MOOC Courses through Interactive Learning

Massive Open-Access Online Courses (MOOCs) employ online technology to increase access to educational which makes it a popular medium for distance learning. However, there is great concern regarding low retention of students and lack of successful course completion.  Traditional student support initiatives may not necessarily be suitable for MOOCs.

One Health One Medicine (OHOM) as a MOOC was offered by St. George’s University during 2013 and 2014. The course engaged 1000 students in 2013 and 610 in 2014. Successful completion rates for the course in 2013 were 11.4% (114) and in 2014 it was 58.5% (357). The significant increase of 500% in students’ successful completion was as a result of engaging students in live and interactive learning experiences. The experience of students in the OHOM course also reflects a completion rate of 5 times the average for MOOCs.   

The relatively high retention of students for the OHOM course was attributed to the development of online infrastructure and applications which enabled a range of interactive opportunities in addition to digitally prepared course content: live interactive sessions, discussion fora, social media communications, case review and reporting, peer review assessments, student led seminar presentations and real time course evaluations and feedback.