Student Emotion, Co-occurrence, and Dropout in a MOOC Context

Abstract

This paper discusses self-reported emotions experienced by students in a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) learning context. Emotions have been previously shown to be related to learning in classrooms and laboratory studies and have even been leveraged to improve learning. In this study, frequently occurring discrete emotions as well as frequently, co-occurring pairs of emotions were analyzed during learning with a MOOC. Both discrete and co-occurring emotions were related to students dropping out of the course, illustrating the importance of student emotion in a MOOC context.