Who Does What in a Massive Open Online Course?

Massive open online Courses (MOOC) collect valuable data on student learning behavior; essentially complete records of all student interactions in a self-contained learning environment, with the benefit of large sample sizes. Time estimation for each participant involved measuring the durations between a student's initial interaction with a resource and the time the student would navigate away. Researchers accumulated durations calculated from each participant's time series for each separate course component, including homework, book, and discussion forums. Researchers found evidence that durations shorter than three seconds represent students navigating to desired resources. Hence, researchers do not count these intervals as activity. In addition, they did not accumulate durations longer than one hour, assuming users have disengaged from their computers.