Crues et.al found that the motivations behind a student's enrollment in an introductory CS MOOC correlates with their continued persistence and participation. In addition, the motivations for enrolling in a CS MOOC differ between genders. Data was gathered from a voluntary beginning-of-course survey (n=5807), and analysis was done with k-means clustering and text/data-mining. Notable results were:

• Interaction with the MOOC forums correlated with persistence for both genders.
• Men were less likely to post in the forums and participate in the MOOC when compared with women.
• Men persisted longer in the course.
• Women who were in the computer-science-student cluster were most likely to participate on the forums.