Half-full or half-empty? The impact of influential events pre- and intra- COVID 19 pandemic on enrolment, progression and completion of online courses

The SARS-CoV-2 outbreak in 2019 brought an enormous uncertainty and unexpected consequences to the world and in Mexico, students, staff, and professors of higher education were no exception. The online lifestyle became vital for continuous education through various means of remote learning including alternative credentials offered via Massive open online course (MOOCS). Upon announcement of lockdown across the country, Tecnologico de Monterrey, a leading university in Mexico and Latin America, provided free access to the content of Coursera to its community to facilitate a sustained learning environment for all the members. The prolonged COVID-19 pandemic and related news have negatively immersed the community in an environment of fear and anxiety. To monitor the learning progress of the members, understand their response to unprecedented circumstances and provide the community with timely support, we have monitored the course pursuit, progression and the status of completion in Coursera registered by 36,591 users. The data provided insight to the gender of the users enrolling to 6 distinctly different categories of courses and the degree of commitment they demonstrated to the undertaken learning activities. The results showed Computer Science and Programming as one of the most requested course types, and, together with Engineering MOOCS greatly dominated by male users. A timeline of influential events that took place nationally and/or internationally over the course of the 11 months from January 2020 to February 2021 was comprised and compared to the registration, progression and completion of the courses in an attempt to understand the response of our community to the milestones of this concerning global health event. While the results highlight a general struggle to remain motivated and finalize the registered courses, the national and international positive and negative connotations created considerably different responses in participants across different time periods. The current article takes a close look into dynamic of the users of the online courses across this challenging milestone.