The Influence of Grades on Learning Behavior in MOOCs: Certification vs, Continued Participation

MOOCs (massive open online courses) often use comprehensive exams and homework problem sets to assess students in their overall understanding of course material. The grades students receive on these tests and assignments determine whether they complete or become certified in course material. However, beyond receiving a certification, how do grades impact the learning behavior in students? Do students who receive poor grades actively change their overall activity to improve their grades? To better understand the impact of grades, we observe overall student activity on two MITx MOOCs for certified students and students who continuously participate in MOOC assignments. We use click stream data to compile the overall activity of a student and we use points earned divided by total possible points to calculate the students' grades. We observe that students with the highest levels of activity have some of the highest grades. We also observe that the difference in activity before and after the finalization of a grade (delta-activity) have greater variation as grade increases. Finally, we observe very little changes in grades (delta-grade) for certified students when visualized against delta-activity and that continuously participating students have greater grade changes compared to certified students.