Google is trying to find ways to lower the dropout
rates for online courses and improve the perception of massive open online
courses (MOOCs) by sponsoring a Carnegie Mellon University project designed to
provide feedback on student work, create social ties between learners, and
design more effective MOOCs.
“I think we need to enable MOOCs to be more
immersive, adaptive, and social,” Alfred Spector, vice president for research
and special initiatives for Google, said in an article in VentureBeat.
The project is trying to personalize the
MOOC experience through data-driven evaluations monitored by teachers and
targeting the parts of the course students have mastered. Researchers are also
trying to find ways to reduce dropout rates with data that identify students at
risk. The final part of the project is to make more interactive and engaging
course materials available to students.
“Ninety percent of people that sign up for
MOOCs never finish the course,” said Robert Kraut, a professor at the
Human-Computer Interaction Institute at CMU. “We’re trying to build an
intervention in order to keep the engagements up.”