The study was lead by MIT’s Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Professor, Isaac Chuang, and Harvard’s Graduate School of Education professor, Andrew Ho. After parsing 20 GB of data per course, student metrics, and faculty/course team interviews, the team came to three important observations which might shock some of those who have doubted the capabilities of MOOCs and online learning.
Course Completion Rates are Misleading
One of the most cited issues with MOOCs is their small completion rates. Researchers have seen, however, that many students who didn’t complete courses still accessed a large amount of the course’s content.
Chuang explains, “We found students in the courses who engaged with every single piece of the courseware, students who only read text or viewed videos, students who only took assessments or completed problem sets, and students representing nearly every possible combination of these behaviours.”
What is important is motive, many of the instructors encouraged participation in what students found useful, regardless of certification. The faculty found the participation of these “auditors” just as useful as those seeking certification. So even though only 5.1% of students received their certification, the fact that over 65% accessed some of the course content is promising.
|
|
Percentage of 841,687 Registrants |
|
Received Certification |
5.1% |
|
Accessed Over Half of the Content |
4.3% |
|
Accessed Less than Half of the Content |
55.8% |
|
Accessed None of the Content |
34.8% |
According to Ho, “A fixation on completion rates limits our imagination of what might be possible with MOOCs. A better criterion for success might be for students to complete more of the course than they thought they would, or to learn more than they might have expected when they first clicked on a video or course forum.”
Attrition Rates are Time Dependent
It turns out that most students interact with MOOCs in a fashion more reminiscent of web-based media interactions than they do with conventional courses. You start with a quick browse, and if your interests are piqued then your engagement will increase; a process which naturally has a funneling affect.
It was found that after the second week of the course, the likelihood of attrition reduced by 16%. In fact, half of the registrants left within the first two weeks.
Due to the asynchronous format of the MOOC courses, however, registration rates are all over the map with some students registering months in advance and others registering months after the courses started. In fact, some students who received certification would register in the final week of a course and complete the minimum number of assignments just before the deadline. Even stranger, a fifth of registrations would happen after certification closed!
Small Percentages but Big Numbers
Just as a 5% increase in a stock price would have a more dramatic effect on a million dollar investor than a thousand dollar investor, a 5% certification rate means a different thing to a course with 50,000 registrants than to one with just a few hundred.
However, the same can be said about the demographics. Though an online registrant was more likely to be a male, over 26 years old, with a bachelor’s degree than any other demographic, they only accounted for 31% of the total registrants.
In fact, about a third (234,463) of the students had a high-school education or less, and more than 6% (45,884) were over 50 years of age. In fact, 20,745 registrants were from the UN’s Least Developed Countries list and over 4,000 registrants obtained certification in more than one course.
It is therefore unfair to state, as many naysayers do, that MOOCs are not reaching those that need them most – those unable to receive an education any other way.
As Chuang put it, “While typical MOOC registrants have a college degree already, hundreds of thousands of our registrants do not. Many of our MOOC registrants are from the United States, but 72 percent are from abroad. These MOOCs are reaching many non-traditional and underserved communities of students, very different from typical students on campuses at traditional universities.”
Looking Beyond the Numbers
Regardless of the numbers, Ho and Chuang mention that MOOCs have been a great place for both experimentation and research. Instructors can test new methods of teaching while students can decide if, what, when and how they wish to absorb the content.
“This is about the democratization of learning: Learners are in control” said Ho. “We are at the beginning of an exciting effort to understand how people learn and how to educate well and effectively at scale.”
Chuang adds that “the story hidden underneath this series of reports may be this: Institutions like ours are coming to appreciate how cross-institutional educational collaborations involving many students and many courses can open new routes to understand and improve student learning — making a difference around the world and back here on campus.”
Perhaps this new technology for teaching is not as new as we think it is, though, but really just a step back to the format of ancient universities, where it was learning for learning’s sake.
Source MIT