Welcome


This blog is dedicated to the topics of Course materials, Innovation, and Technology in Education. it is intended as an information source for the college store industry, or anyone interested in how course materials are changing. Suggestions for discussion topics or news stories are welcome.

The site uses Google's cookies to provide services and analyze traffic. Your IP address and user agent are shared with Google, along with performance and security statistics to ensure service quality, generate usage statistics, detect abuse and take action.

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

10 Reasons Why Students Don't Finish MOOCs

Statistics show that completion rates for massive open online courses (MOOCs) are around 7%. Open Culture, a web site that curates and provides free cultural and educational media, came up with some reasons why the totals are so low.

The site got responses from 50 of its readers and found the main reason for dropping a MOOC was that it took too much time.

Readers also felt MOOCs assumed students had more knowledge about the subject than they did, while at the same time tended to be too basic. Others listed a formal lecture format that was “obsolete and inefficient,” poor design, clunky communication tools, bad peer reviews, and hidden costs of course materials as reasons.

Finally, students dropped MOOCs because they were shopping around to find topics that interested them and because they didn’t take the course to earn a certificate anyway, just as a recent University of Edinburgh study suggests.