In Making Sense of MOOCS (2012), Sir John Daniel notes
that early MOOCs were based on connectivism and networking
within a more open-ended environment whereas more recent
MOOCs have been based on a more behaviorist
approach with specific learning objectives and tasks. However,
MOOCs have a pattern of attracting very large numbers of participants (e.g., 155,000 for an MIT MOOC) with a very
high attrition rate (e.g., 95%). A 5%pass rate for a typical university
course would be considered unacceptable. Why should
that be acceptable for a MOOC? Why is the attrition rate so
high for most MOOCs?