STUDY SYSTEM
How to Actually Finish a Free Online Engineering Course
Only about 3% of MOOC participants finished their courses in a large MIT and Harvard study. Here is a study system built on the research that works, and how EDWartens supports it.
To finish an online course, decide a finish date, book specific study slots as if-then plans (day, time, place, module), build every example yourself instead of only watching, test yourself before you rewatch, and space your reviews across weeks. Most people who start a free course never finish it; the ones who do usually have a plan and a reason, not more willpower.
Checked 1 October 2026. The research below is listed under Sources; facts about EDWartens come from the site itself on that date.
How many people actually finish free online courses?
Very few. Justin Reich and José A. Ruipérez-Valiente analysed MIT and Harvard courses on edX from 2012 to 2018, 5.63 million learners and 12.67 million course registrations, and published the results in Science in 2019 as The MOOC pivot. As reported by Inside Higher Ed, 3.13% of participants completed their courses in 2017-18, down from about 4% in the two previous years and nearly 6% in 2014-15.
Two other findings matter more for you. Among learners who paid for a verified certificate, 46% completed in 2017-18. And most learners never came back: the share of first-time MOOC learners who took another course the following year fell from 38% to 7%.
The paying learners did not finish because a fee made the lessons easier. They finished more often because they had decided this course mattered and had a reason to see it through. You can get most of that effect without paying anything, by deciding up front what the course is for and building a plan around it.
Why do people drop out?
The reasons are rarely the content. They are:
- No slot. "I will study when I have time" means never, because there is no time that is not already taken.
- Watching instead of doing. Videos feel like progress. Without building the example in the software, nothing sticks, and by module four the course stops making sense.
- One stuck point. A licence error, a simulator that will not connect, a concept that does not land. Without somewhere to ask, a single blocker ends the course.
- No finish line. A self-paced course with no date drifts until it is forgotten.
A study system that works
The research on learning gives three tools that are simple and well tested.
1. Plan with if-then statements. Implementation intentions are plans of the form "if it is Monday at 19:00, then I open module 3 at my desk". Gollwitzer and Sheeran's 2006 meta-analysis of 94 independent tests found that forming them had a medium-to-large effect on reaching goals (d = 0.65). Writing "I will study more" is a wish; writing the day, time, place and module is a plan.
2. Test yourself before you rewatch. Roediger and Karpicke's 2006 experiments compared students who reread a prose passage with students who practised recalling it. On a test five minutes later, rereading did slightly better. A week later the result reversed: in one experiment, students who had recalled the passage three times remembered 61% of it, against 40% for those who had read it four times. The rereaders also predicted they would remember more. Rewatching feels like learning; recalling actually is.
3. Space it out. Cepeda and colleagues' 2006 review pooled 839 assessments of distributed practice from 317 experiments. Spreading study across sessions beats massing it into one, and the longer you need to remember something, the wider the gaps between reviews should be. Four one-hour sessions beat one four-hour session.
How should you schedule it?
Pick a finish date first. Take the course's own estimate of hours, divide by what you can really give each week, and add a week in six for slippage. A 28-hour course at 5 hours a week is about six weeks of study; put the date seven weeks out and tell someone.
Then book the sessions. Short weekday sessions keep the thread; a longer weekend session gives time for the practice task, which is where most of the learning happens.
Start each session with five minutes of recall: without looking, write down what the last lesson covered and how you would do its example. Then check. That is the testing effect working for you at no cost.
Practice first, video second
For engineering courses, the software is the course. A useful rule: never watch two lessons in a row without building something. If the lesson programs a start/stop circuit, stop the video and program it. If it configures a subnet, configure it. If it trains a model, run the notebook and change one parameter to see what happens.
Install the software before session one. Licence and installation problems are the most common early blocker in PLC and SCADA courses; our TIA Portal free trial guide and free PLC simulators compared cover the usual ones.
When you are stuck, set a 20-minute limit. After 20 minutes of the same error, ask, then move on to the next lesson while you wait.
How does EDWartens support finishing?
Here is what the site actually does, read from its code:
- A plan sized to your week. The free learning plan builder takes a learning path and 3, 5, 8 or 12 hours a week and lays out a week-by-week plan, course by course, from the courses' own estimates for lessons, notes and practice.
- Progress that is saved. With a free account, your progress is saved as you watch. A module counts as watched once you have seen 90% of its video time, so you can stop mid-module and come back. Courses do not expire.
- A practice task in every module, plus a project brief for the course, so there is always something to build, not just watch. Our guide to building a portfolio from course projects shows what to do with the result.
- Ask an engineer. Under every lesson there is an Ask an engineer tab where you send a question about that module to a trainer and read the answer in the same place, so you do not lose your spot in the video.
- A nudge when you stall. If you stop, the site may email you once for that situation, naming the module to open next rather than a vague "come back". Nobody is emailed twice for the same state, and finished learners are not chased.
- Paths that release one course at a time. On a learning path, the next course is added only when you are halfway through the current one, so your dashboard never fills with unstarted courses.
- One final with a clear rule. Each course has one assessment: a final of 15 questions drawn from every module, 60 minutes, pass mark 60% (nine of fifteen), three attempts, then a 24-hour wait and a fresh paper. Sit it within a week of your last module, while it is fresh.
The optional EDWartens Certificate of Completion is issued only after you pass that final, costs from US$2.99 for a beginner course, and carries a code anyone can check at edwartens.com/verification. It is not a vendor certification and it is not accredited; it records that you finished and passed.
Start with a short one
If you have started and abandoned courses before, finish a short one first. A finished six-week course does more for your confidence and your CV than three half-done long ones. Good first choices: Electrical Fundamentals for Technicians if you are new to the trade, Siemens TIA Portal for a first PLC, or Python for AI and Engineering Data for the AI route. Browse the free course catalogue, create a free account so progress is saved, and put the finish date in your calendar today.
Take the free course
Questions
What is the completion rate for free online courses?
Low. In Reich and Ruipérez-Valiente's 2019 Science paper on MIT and Harvard courses on edX, 3.13% of participants completed in 2017-18. Among learners who paid for a verified certificate, 46% completed. Paying signals intent; it is the intent and the plan that do the work.
How many hours a week should I study an online course?
Whatever you can keep for months, which for most working people is three to six hours. Five hours split across four or five short sessions usually beats one long weekend session, because spaced practice improves retention.
Is rewatching videos a good way to study?
Not on its own. In Roediger and Karpicke's 2006 experiments, students who practised recalling a passage remembered more a week later than students who reread it, even though the rereaders felt more confident. Test yourself first, then rewatch only what you got wrong.
What happens if I fail the EDWartens final assessment?
You get three attempts at the 15-question final, pass mark 60%. After three, there is a 24-hour wait and then a fresh paper. Use the wait to review the modules your wrong answers came from.
Does EDWartens save my progress if I stop for a few weeks?
Yes. Progress is saved to your free account as you watch, and a module counts as watched once you have seen 90% of its video time. Courses do not expire, so you can pick up where you stopped.
Sources
- Reich, J. and Ruipérez-Valiente, J. A. (2019) The MOOC pivot, Science 363(6423)
- Inside Higher Ed: Study offers data to show MOOCs didn't achieve their goals (Jan 2019)
- Gollwitzer, P. M. and Sheeran, P. (2006) Implementation intentions and goal achievement: a meta-analysis
- Roediger, H. L. and Karpicke, J. D. (2006) Test-enhanced learning, Psychological Science 17(3)
- Cepeda, N. J. et al. (2006) Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks, Psychological Bulletin
Written by the EDWartens engineering team for general education. Product names are trademarks of their owners; mentioning them does not imply endorsement. Prices and terms of other providers were checked on the date shown and can change.
