The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge,
departed from its normal practice of marketing massive open online courses
(MOOCs) to the public by offering a popular circuits and electronics class to its
on-campus students for credit. A study of that pilot program found students who
took the class online not only liked the flexibility, but also reported feeling
less stress.
MIT launched the pilot to address student concerns over
scheduling conflicts. The results have MIT administrators considering more ways
to create flexible learning environments for students and professors.
“As you can imagine, MIT students are a very active
bunch,” Sheryl Barnes, director of digital learning in residential education,
told Insider Higher Ed.
“And they expressed frustration they couldn’t resolve scheduling conflicts by
having more flexibility.”
There were differences between the MOOC version of the class
and the traditional course. MOOC homework and final exam allowed for multiple
tries at answers, but provided no partial credit. MOOC students weren’t able to
review their graded exam to find out which answers they got wrong, but were
provided instant online feedback on homework.
“On the open courseware version of the class, they have
lecture slides for each topic that also almost match identically in order of
topic,” one student said in the report.
“And so I’d just read through all those lecture slides, which were similar, but
it was just a little cleaner and a little easier to go through. And they had
nice summaries at the beginning of each lecture, like a review of what was covered
in the previous set, so I went through those, and then I’d go to the homework,
and then while doing the homework, as needed, I’d go back to the videos and watch
to listen and review over anything that I didn’t get.”
