Testing Theories of Goal Progress in Online Learning

Online educational platforms increasingly allow learners to consume content at their own pace with on-demand formats, in contrast to the synchronous content of traditional education. Thus, it is important to understand and model learner engagement within these environments. Using data from four business courses hosted on Coursera, the authors model learner behavior as a two-stage decision process, with the first stage determining across-day continuation (vs. quitting) and the second stage determining within-day choices among lectures, quizzes, and breaks. By modeling the heterogeneity across learners pursuing lecture and quiz completion goals, the authors capture different patterns of consumption that correspond to extant theories of goal progress within an empirical field setting. They find that most individuals exhibit a learning style whereby lecture utility changes as an inverted U-shaped function of current progress. This model may also be used as an early detection system to anticipate changes in engagement, and it enables the authors to relate learning styles to final performance outcomes and enrollment in additional courses. Finally, the authors examine how quiz-taking varies across learners in different courses and between those who have paid versus not paid for the option to earn a course certificate.