Internationalizing Professional Development: Using Educational Data Mining to Analyze Learners’ Performance and Dropouts in a French MOOC

Abstract

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 learners from the French-speaking world: France and French-speaking European countries, the Caribbean, North Africa, and Central and West Africa. Results show that the largest gaps in MOOC achievements occur between 1) learners from partner institutions versus self-enrolled learners 2) learners from European countries versus low- and middle-income countries, and 3) learners who are professionally active versus inactive learners (i.e., with available time). Finally, we used the CHAID data-mining method to analyze the main characteristics and discriminant factors of MOOC learner performance and dropout.

Keywords:

• MOOCs,
• learner grades,
• learner dropout,
• learner performance,
• academic cohorts,
• educational data mining,
• CHAID,
• low- and middle-income countries,
• developing countries