Using Google Analytics to Analyze Users of a Massive Open Online Course

At present there are an infinite number of components and resources that can be deployed in the platform of massive open online courses (MOOC). However, user behavior on the platform remains an unknown, and indeed, little research has been conducted into whether resources within the course are actually used properly. Knowing what the characteristics and behavior of students are within the platform allows for changes to be made to existing courses, thus increasing their acceptance, improving the learning experience and helping to achieve the learning outcomes. Therefore, the use of Google Analytics (GA) is proposed to monitor student activity in MOOC, allowing for modeling the behavior of students. This article presents a study that analyzes the behavior of 18,677 students, distributed amongst 10 MOOC. This study analyzed demographic data, metrics according to the number of sessions, Internet connection speed and browsers used, among others. Once the student behavior is analyzed via GA, changes can be made to components and resources of MOOC and, thus increase the assent of students.