  Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are attracting the attention of people
all over the world. Regardless the platform, numbers of registrants for online
courses are impressive but in the same time, completion rates are
disappointing. Understanding the mechanisms of dropping out based on the
learner profile arises as a crucial task in MOOCs, since it will allow
intervening at the right moment in order to assist the learner in completing
the course. In this paper, the dropout behaviour of learners in a MOOC is
thoroughly studied by first extracting features that describe the behavior of
learners within the course and then by comparing three classifiers (Logistic
Regression, Random Forest and AdaBoost) in two tasks: predicting which users
will have dropped out by a certain week and predicting which users will drop
out on a specific week. The former has showed to be considerably easier, with
all three classifiers performing equally well. However, the accuracy for the
second task is lower, and Logistic Regression tends to perform slightly better
than the other two algorithms. We found that features that reflect an active
attitude of the user towards the MOOC, such as submitting their assignment,
posting on the Forum and filling their Profile, are strong indicators of
persistence.
