As for the existing research investigating the reasons for attrition, though in consideration of some limitations mentioned above in the introduction part, such as the difference between traditional learning and online learning, as is pointed out in Study of UK Online Learning Final Report that online learning students have very different expectations from a traditional campus-based undergraduate (David White, et al, 2010), there is still a number of work exploring the reasons leading to high rate of attrition rates and at the same time trying to present some measures to solve the problem.

For instance, Koutropoulos, A., et al (2012) focused on the use of emotive vocabulary which is words or phrases that are implicitly emotional (happy, sad, frustrated) or relate to emotional contexts (I wasn’t able to…), attempting to determine whether it could serve as a mechanism for predicting future and continued participation in the MOOC. The results indicated that emotive vocabulary usage did not significantly predict or impact participation retention in MobiMOOC-the course he used as an example.