Study of the academic behavior of participants in a MOOC course on Energy Sustainability using Principal Component Analysis (PCA)

Abstract

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have generated great expectations around the world, hence the need to continue researching this educational phenomenon. The purpose of this study is to perform an analysis of the data obtained in a MOOC course on Energy Sustainability, to determine the academic behavior of the participants, based on numerical variables and categorical variables. We analyzed 13 variables raised in the MOOC course to a population of 453 participants whose condition was the completion of an initial and final survey, that is, they remained in the course until the end of it, for data analysis was used the “Principal Component Analysis” (PCA), as for the software used is the PCAmixdata package, which allows working with numerical and categorical variables. The results reflect findings on variables that account for the influence and relationship that exists in certain activities with the approval of the participants. The study contributes for both teaching and technical teams to consider the results in future MOOC designs and also to incorporate valuable elements of data analytics.