At the end of last year, Isaac Chuang, senior associate dean of digital
learning, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, and professor
of physics at MIT, and Andrew Ho, professor of education and chair of the Vice
Provost for Advances in Learning Research Committee at Harvard University, released
one
of the largest surveys of massive open online courses (MOOCs) to date. Their
report, HarvardX and MITx: Four Years of Open Online Courses—Fall 2012-Summer
2016, draws on
290 courses, 245,000 certificates (both free and paid), 4.5 million
participants, and 2.3 billion events logged online on edX, the MOOC platform established by Harvard and MIT.
The
survey revealed that the typical participant in an edX MOOC is a 20something
male from outside the U.S., who already has a bachelor’s degree and is taking
the course for certification. The number of participants has grown steadily
since edX launched in 2012, with more than 1,500 people registering for a
course every day.
While
the median number of participants in an edX course is about 7,900, only 500 end
up becoming certified. The report noted that not all courses offer free
certificates and not all participants sign up in pursuit of certification.
The complete report is available on publisher Elsevier's Social Science Research Network site.