in of internet users in the european union followed an online course against in across the oecd countries on which data is available of people followed an online course with peaks of in finland and the lowest levels in austria czech republic and poland figure these high dropout rates can be explained by several factors learner s motivation to start a course incentives driving completion as well as the inherent difficulties that completing a mooc may entail as an illustration educational research has shown that selfregulation skills which are particularly important for online courses do not simply emerge from studying on line but are a precondition for effective selfdirected learning orr rimini and van damme