Easy or Difficult! MOOC difficulty and retention

MOOCs are experiencing high enrolment statistics and academics are focusing on ways to improve the retention rates in MOOCs. e-Yantra imparts hands-on engineering skills in a highly scalable manner to undergraduate students in engineering, polytechnic and science colleges. The e-Yantra MOOC takes form of a Robotics Competition where students are mentored to solve problems modelled as “Themes.” We study the effect of “difficulty levels” on participant retention of two Themes (hands-on MOOCs). The performance of 800+ students that participated in each of these MOOCs (1600+ total students) offered in 2017 and 2018 is considered. In the light of increasing popularity of online learning especially through MOOCs, this study contributes to the literature of “funnel of participation” in MOOCs teaching conceptually difficult engineering topics in a hands-on Project Based Learning mode. Our study brings contrast with the general comprehension from prior literature that shows MOOCs teaching easier concepts to have high completion rates and MOOCs teaching difficult concepts to have low completion rates. We find simplicity and coherence of MOOC design, regardless of difficulty level of MOOC to have a stronger effect on learning outcomes. Conceptually difficult MOOC in our study has “2.75” times higher completion rate compared to the easier MOOC. This affirms that it is better to teach solving “one challenging problem” than to teach solving a series of easy problems since the latter leads to “conceptual clutter” among participants and as a result a fatigue and consequential increased dropouts.