Yang, Diyi, et al. "Exploring the effect of confusion in discussion forums of massive open online courses." Proceedings of the second (2015) ACM conference on learning@ scale. 2015.

This study examines the impact of confusion on student retention in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). By analyzing discussion forum behavior and clickstream data, the researchers developed a classification model to identify posts expressing confusion. They then used survival analysis to quantify how confusion affects student dropout rates. The findings show that increased confusion, whether expressed by students or encountered in forums, significantly lowers retention rates. However, providing support and resolving confusion can mitigate this negative effect. The study also explores how confusion in different contexts and aspects of courses affects dropout rates, offering insights for designing interventions to improve student retention in MOOCs.