There’s been no shortage of reports on low completion
rates for massive open online courses (MOOCs), but maybe the critics are
looking at it the wrong way. Harvard researcher Justin Reich thinks so and conducted
a study to understand why people take MOOCs in the first place.
Nearly 80,000 people taking one of nine MOOCs offered
by Harvard responded to Reich’s survey about their goals. He sorted the
respondents into categories—completers, auditors, browsers, and unsure—and
found that 19.5% of the respondents who intended to complete the course did
finish. Just 5.4% of the respondents who never intended to complete the MOOC in
the first place actually made it to the end.
The study wasn’t conducted to convince the critics, but
to find distinctions among people who take MOOCs.
“If researchers can discern how many students leave
MOOCs because of life’s other commitments, it might help estimate a reasonable
ceiling on retention rates in voluntary, free, and open online courses,” Reich
wrote.
“Further, uncovering how many students leave because they are dissatisfied with
a course might better estimate the MOOC attrition levels that course developers
could realistically address through better instructional design.”