Massive Open Online Courses for Building Statistical Capacity in Computer-Assisted Surveys

Abstract

In partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the Asian Development Bank developed two freely accessible massive open online courses (MOOCs) to provide statistical capacity building in computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) globally. CAPI typically takes the form of tabletbased survey data collection. One of the courses focused on the CSPro platform; the other on Survey Solutions.• The two courses, which comprised eight modules of videos, exercises, and quizzes, ran concurrently over 8 weeks in early 2019.• The 655 students who enrolled from around the world could choose to take one CAPI course or both together.• The CSPro course had a completion rate of 35%, and the Survey Solutions course of 37%-well above the typical MOOC completion rates of between 2% and 14%.• The per-student cost for the MOOCs is estimated to be 7 times lower than equivalent classroom training conducted by ADB, as MOOCs significantly reduce logistical, transportation, and personnel costs. Further, the potential to conduct additional rounds of the MOOCs with minimal maintenance costs means that the per capita costs will reduce over time.• A second round of the two CAPI courses will be launched in mid-June 2020. Interested learners can register at: https://forms.gle/ bE7LdqzneuvsTko88.