Students attendance and retention is a major concern contributing to a successful MOOC experience <cite the paper on how to measure MOOC success>, especially that to many learners, the problem is about fitting the needed study hours into their busy schedules, and being on the same page as the course progresses.
In this 3 months course, we note that out of the 73 registered participants, the attendance rate was higher at the beginning of the course (~85%), then it dropped progressively towards mid-June and early July (Figure \ref{287326}). This accompanied a steep part of the withdrawal curve which can be related to 2 factors: 1) the Linux module, which is understandably challenging as the material naturally requires a bit different mode of thinking than what wet lab biologist are typically used to. 2) culturally, the IBT course started just a few weeks before the holy month of Ramadan coinciding with end-of-year/semester holidays in many universities and colleges, hence it was easy for both students and academic staff alike to be on top of things with the IBT. Once these holidays were over, IBT participants needed to be back to full time working hours and classes in their respective institutes, making it harder for them to attend IBT sessions and timely submit their assignments or work towards their tests. In fact, Figure \ref{189578} shows that the 51% of the IBT participants are in academia (18% staff, 33% current students).
We don't have complete data on all students who withdrew the course (only one such participant filled the exit survey), but this later factor is based upon our personal knowledge of some of these withdrawn participants. While we didn't explicitly ask participants for their age, but as can be seen from Figure \ref{189578}B, the majority have graduated from the University of Khartoum (so did the teaching assistants of the course), hence it was possible to investigate this factor inofficially.