Which Planning Tactics Predict Online Course Completion?

Planning is a self-regulated learning strategy and widely used behavior change technique that can help learners achieve academicgoals (e.g., pass an exam, apply to college, or complete an online course). Numerous studies have tested the e?ects of planninginterventions, but few have examined the content of learners’ plans and how it relates to their academic outcomes. Building on alarge-scale intervention study, we conducted a qualitative content analysis of 650 learner plans sampled from 15 massive open onlinecourses (MOOCs). We identi?ed a number of planning tactics, compared their prevalence, and examined which ones signi?cantlypredict course progress and completion using regression analyses. We found that learners whose plans specify a time of day (e.g.,morning, afternoon, night) are signi?cantly more likely to complete a MOOC, but only 25% of the learners in our sample used thistactic. The high degree of variation in the e?ectiveness of planning tactics may contribute to mixed intervention ?ndings in scale-upstudies. Models of plan e?ectiveness can be used to provide feedback on the quality of learners’ plans and encourage them to usee?ective tactics to achieve their learning goals.