Measuring MOOCs
Are you already suffering from MOOC fatigue even though you have never taken or taught a massive open online course?
One valid criticism of these courses is that we don't know if they actually work. Well, there is a lot of anecdotal information. And people are impressed by the schools doing them and the numbers of students they attract.
But any data that has appeared from schools or providers has offered little insight. We know the number of students enrolled and sometimes we know how many completed the work and from what countries they are accessing the content.
Now, some new data from edX (a nonprofit MOOC platform financed by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) has given some more info on the demographics of a key population: students who not only registered for a particular MOOC, but who performed well.
edX’s first course, a virtual lab-based electrical engineering course called Circuits & Electronics, had 155,000 students registered for the course when it opened. Only 23,000 earned a single point on the first problem set. It is down to 9,300 who passed the midterm. 8,200 students took the final exam and a bit more than 7,000 earned a passing grade and the option of receiving an informal certificate from edX.
30 percent of the students surveyed said they did not have a bachelor’s degree and 6% claimed a doctorate, 28% a master’s degree, and 37% a bachelor’s degree. Of the "completers", half were 26+ years old and 45% were traditional college-aged students, with 5% in high school. The age range appeared to be 14-74.
There is more detail in an article on insidehighered.com but edX and others cautions that "extrapolating larger truths about MOOC students from such narrow samples is similar to a blind man trying to describe the dimensions and habits of an elephant after touching one square foot of its hide. The profile of the successful student in an adapted MIT course in electrical engineering is likely different from the profile of a successful student in an introductory computer science course, or a course in sociology or world music. Like any online course, the ability of a MOOC to match the outcomes of the traditional version will probably vary by course and professor"
One valid criticism of these courses is that we don't know if they actually work. Well, there is a lot of anecdotal information. And people are impressed by the schools doing them and the numbers of students they attract.
But any data that has appeared from schools or providers has offered little insight. We know the number of students enrolled and sometimes we know how many completed the work and from what countries they are accessing the content.
Now, some new data from edX (a nonprofit MOOC platform financed by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) has given some more info on the demographics of a key population: students who not only registered for a particular MOOC, but who performed well.
edX’s first course, a virtual lab-based electrical engineering course called Circuits & Electronics, had 155,000 students registered for the course when it opened. Only 23,000 earned a single point on the first problem set. It is down to 9,300 who passed the midterm. 8,200 students took the final exam and a bit more than 7,000 earned a passing grade and the option of receiving an informal certificate from edX.
30 percent of the students surveyed said they did not have a bachelor’s degree and 6% claimed a doctorate, 28% a master’s degree, and 37% a bachelor’s degree. Of the "completers", half were 26+ years old and 45% were traditional college-aged students, with 5% in high school. The age range appeared to be 14-74.
There is more detail in an article on insidehighered.com but edX and others cautions that "extrapolating larger truths about MOOC students from such narrow samples is similar to a blind man trying to describe the dimensions and habits of an elephant after touching one square foot of its hide. The profile of the successful student in an adapted MIT course in electrical engineering is likely different from the profile of a successful student in an introductory computer science course, or a course in sociology or world music. Like any online course, the ability of a MOOC to match the outcomes of the traditional version will probably vary by course and professor"
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