Combating Procrastination on MOOCs via Optimal Calls-to-Action: Evidence from a Field Experiment

Abstract

Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) are a booming phenomenon in the digital era. It is estimated that, to date, MOOC platforms have attracted more than 58 million users around the world.However, completion rates on MOOCs remain quite low, with estimates ranging from 5% to 15%.Procrastination is generally accepted as a primary driver of these low course completion rates.Therefore, this study investigates the optimal design of targeted calls-to-action (CTAs) aimed to overcome procrastination in assignment completion on MOOCs. We conducted a large-scale randomized field experiment on a leading MOOC platform in China, randomly targeting MOOC users with different messages to determine the impact on students’ duration to, and probability of assignment completion. We experimented with five types of treatments: a simple call-to-action, planning prompt, descriptive norms and financial incentives. We observe a number of interesting findings. We observe that descriptive norms and a financial incentive drive a higher likelihood of assignment completion and shorter time to completion amongst students. We also observe a surprisingly negative average effect from delivering a planning prompt, wherein the student is provided with a reminder about assignment availability in tandem with a target date for assignment completion. We subsequently show that planning prompts backfire if subjects perceive the deadline to be distant, because this attenuates urgency and leads to complacency. Our study contributes to research on approaches to mitigating procrastination and provides useful design and management implications for MOOC platforms.