MOOCs Made Strides in 2017

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are now more readily available than ever, with more than 9,400 courses and 500 credentials available to anyone interested. Providers are also finding ways to make the courses more sustainable through premium credentials, online degree programs, and access to content.

Access to content has become a big business, ranging from free to million-dollar licensing deals between providers and employers. Providers are also placing more content behind paywalls, including graded assignments.

At the same time, though, enrollment has slowed. New data from Class Central, a MOOC discovery platform, showed that 20 million learners registered for their first MOOC in 2017, about three million fewer than in 2016.

“Over half a decade since their debut, MOOCs may finally have found their footing and a sustainable revenue model,” Dhawal Shah, founder of Class Central, wrote in a recent post for EdSurge. “No, they didn’t disrupt universities, but they may have changed how working professions access continued learning and career-advancement opportunities.”

Making MOOCs Massive Again

Over the last five years, massive open online courses (MOOCs) have become on-demand sessions that allow participants to learn at their own pace. Changes were also made that allowed providers to monetize the process by charging for certification.

While a poll from Class Central, a MOOC discovery platform, found that 64% of respondents said they preferred the changes, there was also a cost. MOOCs are no longer attracting large numbers of students, and the learners taking the classes aren’t interacting on discussion forums.

“These days, most MOOC providers let learners start courses whenever they like (or on a biweekly or monthly basis as Coursera does),” Dhawal Shah, founder of Class Central, wrote in a column for EdSurge. “As a result, the forums are far less vibrant and informative than they were in the early days.”

To find a happy medium, Shah is proposing a MOOC semester offering a limited catalog of instructor-led courses with a fixed schedule and soft deadlines. The selected MOOCs would also offer free certificates to students who meet course requirements by a certain time.

“MOOC providers abandoned free certificates because they were looking for a sustainable business model,” he said. “Reintroducing them could reignite some of the enthusiasm MOOCs initially generated. The potential loss in revenue from free certificates would be offset by the marketing benefits of reaching more users.”

MOOC Less Stressful to MIT Students

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.”

Accepting Alternative Credentials Varies

Alternative credentials are given for learning experiences gained through massive open online courses, training that issues badges, and boot camps. However, institutions take differing approaches on how they issue credit for adult prior learning, according to a report from the Online Learning Consortium and the Research Center for Digital Learning & Leadership.

The study, Alternative Credentials: Prior Learning 2.0, profiled the assessment practices at six institutions, finding that each understood the need for quality measurements. However, internal assessment takes too much time and so is normally outsourced to a nonprofit organization.

Data management and reporting was also a challenge for the schools. Student data can be insufficient for evaluation or maintained by more than one department on campus, making the decision-making process on credit more difficult.

“This availability, or lack of availability, of reliable data leads to mostly suppositions made surrounding time to degree completion,” Jill Buban, senior director of research and innovation for the Online Learning Consortium, wrote in the report. “We know that prior-learning evaluation processes increase time towards degree completion and can be a cost savings for students. However, without accurate data there aren’t identifiable percentages around specific types of credentials, increasing time to degree completion.”

MOOC Develops Sense of Touch

A Stanford University professor created a massive open online course (MOOC) that teaches the science of touch, or haptics. Student use a Hapkit to build a programmable device to perform haptic experiments, providing a better understanding of the sense of touch.

“Haptic technology tries to make virtual experiences seem more real in order to improve how people perform tasks or enjoy virtual experiences,” Allison Okamura, an associate professor of mechanical engineering and designer of the course, said in an article for eCampus News.

The Hapkit includes a sensor, motor, and controller board that can be programmed with a personal computer to produce sensations, such as running your hand over a wall or the click of a ballpoint pen. A redesigned version of the Hapkit, which incorporates low-cost electronic components, uses 3-D printing, making it possible for anyone to download the files and print the kits.

“MOOCs are becoming really big, but are often missing that hands-on component,” said Tania Morimoto, a third-year Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering who worked with Okamura on the Hapkit. “Professor Okamura realized that haptics would be a good way to add that element. People learn in different ways, and having something physical can really help them understand.”

MOOCs Can Rely Too Much on Social Media

A recent Australian study found concerns about integrating too much social media into massive open online courses (MOOCs). Carpe Diem, a MOOC offered in 2014, used Facebook and Twitter for online communication and collaboration, but about half of the course participants didn’t use either.

According to the study,  41% refused to use social media because they felt it blurred the line between their social and professional identities. Nearly 50% were also unhappy with the learning management system (LMS) used by the course.

Respondents complained that the social media sites were intimidating to use and created confusion. Some said it took too much time to check into the LMS, Facebook, and Twitter, while others thought it would have worked better if social media worked within the LMS.

Facilitated discussions, work sharing with peers, and networking opportunities were the most-cited benefits of using social media platforms within MOOCs. However, the group that wasn’t as thrilled saw Facebook and Twitter as useless.

“It may be useful to outline in detail to students the contributions that social learning can bring to a MOOC and, indeed, to any online learning environment,” the researchers wrote. “Those who believe that conversations on social media are a waste of time may view things differently if they understand how conversations and knowledge sharing with their peers can support their learning experience.”

Research on Adaptive Learning in MOOCs

According to a research paper, students taking a HarvardX massive open online course learned more using adaptive assessments than their classmates who didn't have that opportunity. The study focused on the course Super-Earths and Life, which ran in in the current academic year.

The adaptive-learning group was provided interactive content and assistance crafted to suit their individual learning level through TutorGen’s Student Centered Adaptive Learning Engine (SCALE). Assessments were added for both the experimental and control groups to gauge the effect of the adaptive experience on students’ mastery of the material.

The knowledge gain of the students in the experimental group was 19% higher than their peers in the control group. They also moved through the class material more quickly and demonstrated greater persistence in assessments. Despite this, the study found “no statistically significant differences” between the two groups’ course-completion or certification rates.

Harvard, MIT Share Findings of MOOC Study

A study of massive open online courses (MOOCs) by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University researchers found registration continues to grow. The survey reported that new registrations for MOOCs average more than 1,500 people each day, while the median number of active participants for each course is nearly 8,000.

HarvardX and MITx: Four Years of Open Online Courses noted that 2.4 million unique users participated in one or more MOOCs offered by the two institutions and nearly 250,000 learner certificates were issued over the last four years. It also found that the average number of students enrolled into computer sciences courses is more than 21,000, compared to just over 7,900 for other courses, according to a report in Campus Technology.

At the same time, the study reported a significant drop in MOOC enrollment in 2016. MIT and Harvard University each had about 800,000 participants enrolled in MOOCs in 2015, but last year those numbers fell to 670,000 for MIT courses and 540,000 for HarvardX offerings.

The number of people earning certification also fell to its lowest point in the four years of the study, although the total number of certificates awarded in 2016 was higher than the number presented in the first year of the research. Researchers are concerned that the drop in participation was caused by the decision to not provide free certification for the courses.

“The typical course is smaller than it used to be, but this decrease is also steady and related to the proliferation of courses with more specialized content and smaller audiences,” Andrew Ho, a Harvard researcher who co-authored the study, told TechCrunch. “The MOOC audience continues to grow, but the number of MOOCs is growing faster. An analogy is television viewership numbers, and now we have more ‘channels’ than ever. The question now is how can audiences find the best course for them and on what merits.”

edX Survey Charts MOOC Growth

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.

Coursera Gets into Business Development

Coursera will continue to offer massive open online courses from prestigious colleges and universities from around the world. However, the ed-tech platform is also branching out to corporate learning and development.

The company recently launched Coursera for Business in response to large numbers of employees signing up for its classes in professional development. That should be a profitable venture since the 2015 Annual Training report found 70% of responding companies in the United States use learning management systems, virtual classrooms, webcasting, and other e-learning platforms to train their employees.

“We have 21 million registered users and are adding about a half-a-million registered users per month,” said Coursera CEO Rick Levin in an article for TechCrunch. “When we looked at the email addresses of our learners, we would see thousands signing up from one corporate email domain, tens of thousands in one case.”

Classes in the new program focus on tech skills for employees. Companies using Coursera for Business content can track the progress of their employees, who can earn certificates upon successful completion of a course.

Grading Is Part of MIT Philosophy MOOC

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is offering a new certificate option for a popular online philosophy course through its MITx platform. It’s the first massive open online course (MOOC) to provide students with the opportunity to have written assignments graded by professional philosophers.

“Listening to lectures and reading books is great, but philosophy is all about taking complex ideas and organizing them in a simple way,” Caspar Hare, the MIT professor running the course, said in an article for eCampus News. “You learn by writing, specifically writing to someone.”

Philosophy: God Knowledge and Consciousness introduces students to the basic topics considered by philosophers and the development of critical reasoning and argumentative skills. Writing helps combine those skills and feedback from trained philosophers lets students know how well they actually understood the material.

“Writing is essential to developing these skills,” Hare continued. “Just answering multiple-choice questions isn’t enough. You need to interact and bounce ideas off of other people. And from MIT’s perspective, the new feature helps bring to light different ideas from people with different cultural backgrounds. Writing enables these insights to pass through the community, which benefits everyone.”

MOOCs as an Affordability Solution

There will always be students who want and need a traditional college education, but there also have to be less costly methods of earning a degree, according to Richard DeMillo, director of the Center for 21st Century Universities at Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta.

Colleges must find new ways to deliver education to remain sustainable and DeMillo says massive open online courses (MOOCs) can play a role. Georgia Tech began offering MOOCs in 2011 and saw a 40% increase in applicants in the first year of the program.

The university expanded the program to include a master’s degree in computer science that costs thousands less than what students working on the same degree on campus are paying. The program will have 4,000 students this fall and all were required to meet the same criteria for acceptance, just like any other Georgia Tech students.

“You don’t change the existing order by fighting it,” DeMillo said in an article for Campus Technology. “You find new ways of doing things that make the old ways obsolete.”

A New Look at MOOC Completion Rates

Researchers have been trying to figure out why completion rates for massive open online courses (MOOCs) tend to stay around 10%. A new study showed that putting learners into study groups based on communication preferences isn’t the answer.

The research done at Pennsylvania State University showed that the groupings had no significant impact on students’ performance or completion. Participants in the survey were put into groups based on their preferred methods of communications for the course: asynchronous, which allows students to learn at their own pace with common online communication such as email or discussion boards, or synchronous, a more facilitated form of communication such as videoconferencing.

“These differences were statistically different and were moderated by English language proficiency, gender, level of education, and age,” Adelina Hristova, a Penn State doctoral student and one of the collaborators on the report, said in an article for Penn State News. “Although the groups designed for the study did not significantly influence students’ course performance and completion, our study can serve as baseline data for making grouping decisions in future online courses, including MOOCs.”

The study did note that older learners were more likely to complete the course. It also found that female students preferred to study in groups, while males preferred synchronous communications for the course.

“It has provided me with a fabulous opportunity to study how students of different ages, cultures, genders, and educational backgrounds learn and practice some of the subjects that I teach—namely, design, problem-solving, and creativity,” said Kathryn Jablokow, a Penn State associate professor of mechanical engineering and engineering design. “Those insights influence how I formulate new research studies, and the MOOC also gives me a unique setting in which to test and disseminate new research results.”

Reviving the Original Intent of MOOCs

Almost overnight, massive open online courses (MOOCs) went from idea stage to being the next big thing in higher education. While Sebastian Thrun’s first MOOC attracted an impressive 160,000 students in 2011, interest grew to 35 million individuals who signed up for at least one of the free online courses in 2015.

The blemish on the success story has always been completion rates, but MOOC providers also have had to show they are worth the investment. That pressure has led MOOC platforms to shift emphasis to job training and charging students for credentials.

That’s troubling to author Jonathon Keats, who suggested in a column for Wired that the real goal of MOOCs should be to interest people in everything.

“The technology underlying MOOCs—as well as their reach—provides a solid platform for broadening people’s interests,” Keats wrote. “MOOCs need to be linked across disciplines, with recommendation engines like those employed by Netflix and YouTube to entice students to compulsively take up new interests. Completion rates need to be de-emphasized in favor of curiosity quotients.

“Vocation training is just one thin layer of education,” he added. “For edutech to be worthy of its name—and for everything to truly change—MOOC platforms need to make every mind as expansive as the World Wide Web.”

Prep Students Use MOOCs to Start College

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are making it easier for high school students to explore the choices offered in college before they ever apply.

According to a report from U.S. News & World Report, MOOCs allows high school students to gauge their interest in potential majors and gain exposure to courses and instruction at the college level.

Taking a MOOC can also provide the extracurricular activities college admissions officers like to see. Experts say students should list MOOCs they’ve completed on admissions applications, or at least mention they’ve taken the classes in the “additional information” section of the application.

“They’re really one of many activities that students can do to enrich their learning, and that’s really how we look at them,” said Stu Schmill, dean of admissions and student financial services, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge.

Facebook May Help Retain MOOC Students

A new study reported that Facebook may play a role in keeping students in massive open online courses (MOOCs). The research compared student use of MOOC message boards and course Facebook groups, noting that students seemed more engaged in the Facebook groups.

Students told researchers they preferred Facebook to the MOOC communication tools because it was a real community where they are already regularly connected, according to a report in eCampus News. Students also said they believe Facebook has better collaboration tools and instructor involvement on the social media network.

“In previous studies, we found that the real challenge for MOOC developers and instructors is trying to keep students engaged and enrolled in the course,” said Saijing Zheg, a co-author of the report and a research scientist at Microsoft. “In this study, we are finding that social media tools may be one way to keep students engaged in a MOOC.”

The researchers found students tend to be more willing to reveal their true identities on Facebook, while they make up names for the MOOC message boards. In addition, students said they had more ways to connect with instructors on Facebook.

CU System Is Monetizing MOOCs

The University of Colorado has generated about $110,000 since September from massive open online courses (MOOCs) because students are willing to pay for certificates of completion.

The CU system partnered with Coursera in 2013, producing dozens of courses for the MOOC provider, including several multicourse units on a single topic that have been particularly successful at earning revenue.

“A specialization is a cluster of courses that ends with a capstone project, and what Coursera has found—and we’ve found this, too—is that these specializations, these clusters of courses are really marketable and really valuable to people in the marketplace,” Deborah Keyek-Franssen, associate vice president for digital education and engagement for the CU system, said in an article for eCampus News.

The courses have been rated so highly that the business faculty on the Denver campus voted to accept a Coursera specialization certificate in data warehousing as a transfer credit that admitted students can apply toward the 30-credit master’s degree in information systems.

“That lowers the cost of attendance for students,” Keyek-Franssen said. “The business school understands that this is a way to recruit students into the program and they have full faith in the quality of the specialization because it’s been taught and is being built by their own faculty.”

The Boulder campus doesn’t accept certificates as transfer credits yet, but is looking into the possibility. Provost Russ Moore told eCampus News he needed “strong evidence” that students earning online certificates were getting the same level of instruction as those on campus, but does see the partnership with Coursera as a way to introduce people to the institution.

“In a way, it’s a different way of marketing what CU-Boulder has to offer on a broader scale,” he said. “[Professor] William Kuskin’s comic-book course, the first go-around, had 40,000 people sign up, so that’s a great way to get the word out.”

Many Americans Unaware of Online Learning

A new Pew Research Center study found 74% of American adults consider themselves “personal learners.” While that may sound good, the report also noted that only 14% were “very familiar” with the concept of distance learning and just 5% had heard of massive open online courses (MOOCs).

The survey of nearly 3,000 adults also found that 49% of the respondents said they were “not familiar at all” with distance learning in general and 67% said the same of MOOCs.

Access to technology also played a role. More than 80% of the respondents with smartphones or a high-speed Internet connection participated in a personal learning program, compared to 54% who said they didn’t have a home broadband connection or a smartphone.

“It becomes a bit of a double-whammy for less-educated Americans,” John Horrigan, author of the study, said in a report for Quartz. “They are less attuned to seeking out educational opportunities than other segments [of the population], and less skilled at using new technologies that might help them overcome those gaps.”

Help might be on the horizon from the Federal Communications Commission, which recently voted on a plan to modernize a Reagan-era program, known as Lifeline, that provides phone service to low-income individuals. The plan would allow users to apply the monthly support they receive for Lifeline to a broadband service starting at 500 MB.

“It’s taken a lot of work for the agency to get even this fairly modest modernization of Lifeline from a phone-only program in 1985 to one that is broadband-inclusive,” Josh Stager, policy counsel at New America’s Open Technology Institute, said in a report for Diverse Education. “But many Americans clearly still need help affording the tablets and laptops that would get them online.”

Silicon Valley Shares Its Expertise

Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are morphing the concept of massive open online courses (MOOCs) into 10-minute mini-MOOCs. Known as 10 Minute Insights, the series of mobile-enabled, live-streamed videos are hosted by innovators talking about a variety of topics.

One unusual feature of the videos is viewers are able to ask questions directly of the presenters during the live-streaming event, even on their mobile devices, according to a report in eCampus News. The micro-learning classes are hosted on the social knowledge platform EdCast, with many presenters scheduling their broadcasts in advance to notify those interested in participating.

There are no credits or credentials offered for taking the micro-courses. Instead, the goal is to help entrepreneurs, students, and small-business owners develop baseline business skills.

“There is a huge demand for knowledge and skills in entrepreneurship right now, as often it can be more efficient to create a job than to find one in today’s economy,” said Karl Mehta, founder and CEO of EdCast. “Silicon Valley, specifically, is well-suited for imparting advice on how to scale entrepreneurial skills rapidly.”

MOOC Instructors Need More Support

A new study found that teaching massive open online courses (MOOCs) takes its toll on instructors. The research concluded that supporting instructors may be as important to creation of successful courses as attracting students, according to a report on phys.org.

When researchers from Penn State University and the University of Central Florida interviewed 14 MOOC instructors for the study, they found only four who expressed interested in teaching them on a regular basis. Two instructors said they won’t teach another MOOC and another four worried about the demands of teaching a MOOC as well as a regular class.

Instructors said they struggled to find new ways to teach a MOOC and needed support in course preparation, implementation, and feedback. Dealing with teaching a class the size of a MOOC can be a challenge. One instructor told researchers that the preparation for a course took nearly 400 hours on top of regular teaching responsibilities.

“Most of the research on how we can make MOOCs successful has focused on the student side—how do we attract and retain them, for instance—but now attention is starting to switch to instructors, who make the MOOCs happen,” said Sajing Zheng, a doctoral candidate in information sciences and technology at Penn State who helped conduct the research. “So it’s important to know the motivations of the instructors for teaching this new format and their experiences and challenges when they teach these MOOCs.”