Flexibility is typical of open universities and their e-learning designs. While this constitutes their main attraction, promising learners will be able to study "anytime, anyplace," this also demands more self-regulation and engagement, a cause for student dropout. This case study explores professors' experiences of flexibility in…

High dropout rates constitute a major concern for higher education institutions, due to their economic and academic impact. The problem is particularly relevant for institutions offering online courses, where withdrawal ratios are reported to be higher. Both the impact and these high rates motivate the implementation of interventions oriented to…

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have attracted much interest from educational researchers and practitioners around the world. There has been an increase in empirical studies about MOOCs in recent years, most of which used questionnaire surveys and quantitative methods to collect and analyze data. This study explored the research topics and…

Early warning systems (EWSs) have been successfully used in online classes, especially in massive open online courses, where it is nearly impossible for students to interact face-to-face with their teachers. Although teachers in higher education institutions typically have smaller class sizes, they also face the challenge of being unable to have…

No records of systematic reviews focused on deep learning in open learning have been found, although there has been some focus on other areas of machine learning. Through a systematic review, this study aimed to determine the trends, applied computational techniques, and areas of educational use of deep learning in open learning. The PRISMA…

This work discusses a nudging intervention mechanism combined with an artificial intelligence (AI) system for early detection of learners' risk of failing or dropping out. Different types of personalized nudges were designed according to educational principles and the learners' risk classification. The impact on learners' performance, dropout…

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have been touted as an effective way to make higher education accessible for free or for only a small fee, thus addressing the problem of unequal access and providing new opportunities to young people in middle and low income groups. However, many critiques of MOOCs have indicated that low completion rates are a…

Dropout rates of distance education students is a serious problem for many distance education institutions as well as their students. A psychological factor that is related to dropout is the academic persistence of students, or their intent to finish their degrees. One factor that could predict academic persistence, which is often used to identify…

This paper uses data mining from a French project management MOOC to study learners' performance (i.e., grades and persistence) based on a series of variables: age, educational background, socio-professional status, geographical area, gender, self- versus mandatory-enrollment, and learning intentions. Unlike most studies in this area, we focus on…

Teachers face different challenges and opportunities through distance education. We used a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches to investigate the factors leading in-service science teachers to quit online courses. No differences were found between persistent and drop-out teachers based on their sociodemographic data and their…

MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) have changed the way in which OER (Open Educational Resources) are bundled by teachers and consumed by learners. MOOCs represent an evolution towards the production and offering of structured quality OER. Many institutions that were initially reluctant to providing OER have, however, joined the MOOC wave.…

The purpose of this study is to examine graduation and dropout rates for Hispanic or Latino K-12 students enrolled in fully online and blended public school settings in Arizona. The independent variables of school type (charter vs. non-charter) and delivery method (fully online vs. blended) were examined using multivariate and univariate methods…

While MOOCS have emerged as a new form of open online education around the world, research is stilling lagging behind to come up with a sound theoretical basis that can cover the impact of socio-economic background variables, ICT competences, prior experiences and lifelong learning profile, variance in intentions, environmental influences, outcome…

The aim of this study is to investigate the present status of DCSA program focusing on student enrollment, dropout, and completion trends. The study tries to explore the factors that attract or pull students to enroll in the program and push them to dropout from the program. Secondary data analysis and interview are used to generate data of the…

As online courses become more common, practitioners are in need of clear guidance on how to translate best educational practices into web-based instruction. Moreover, student engagement is a pressing concern in online courses, which often have high levels of dropout. Our goals in this work were to experimentally study routine instructional design…