The MOOC pivot

Abstract

When massive open online courses (MOOCs) first captured global attention in 2012, advocates imagined a disruptive transformation in postsecondary education. Video lectures from the world's best professors could be broadcast to the farthest reaches of the networked world, and students could demonstrate proficiency using innovative computer-graded assessments, even in places with limited access to traditional education. But after promising a reordering of higher education, we see the field instead coalescing around a different, much older business model: helping universities outsource their online master's degrees for professionals. To better understand the reasons for this shift, we highlight three patterns emerging from data on MOOCs provided by Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) via the edX platform: The vast majority of MOOC learners never return after their first year, the growth in MOOC participation has been concentrated almost entirely in the world's most affluent countries, and the bane of MOOCs-low completion rates-has not improved over 6 years.

Multiplatform MOOC Analytics: Comparing Global and Regional Patterns in edX and Edraak

“…Percentage of courses explored and completed by cohort and course category of attrition. This trend, consistent with other recent MOOC studies [18], exemplifies a challenge that MOOC providers have in retaining learners year after year.…”

An Analysis to Understand the Online Learners’ Success in Public Higher Education in Morocco

“…These statistics are more alarming in a study conducted by EDX, only 17% of registered learners have consulted the courses and 8% have a certificate that validates the end of MOOCs (Hennessy, 2016). Recently, another study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology sets the warning bell ringing (Reich & Ruipérez-Valiente, 2019), in this study, on a total of 12.67 million registrations in free online EdX courses by 5.63 million learners from 2012 to 2018, only 6% of online course participants were able to complete their training in 2013-2014, compared to 3.13% last year. Even among participants who paid for "audited" courses, 46% completed the courses in 2017-2018 compared to 56% in 2016-2017.…”

Gamification of MOOCs Adopting Social Presence and Sense of Community to Increase User’s Engagement: An Experimental Study

“…The use of advanced technology made it possible to scale up and reach massive amounts of users, potentially bringing (free) education within arm's reach for anyone with an Internet connection. However, almost seven years later, MOOCs have only partially fulfilled their potential, as they manage to draw in large numbers of users, but also see the majority of them dropping out [1]. Based on an analysis of "565 course iterations from 261 different courses, with a combined 12.67 million course registrations from 5.63 million learners" [1, p. 130], it appears that the majority of people who enrol in a MOOC never enter the course (52% of the study sample), and those who do join, are mainly active during the first two weeks, after which their level of activities drops sharply [1].…”

“…However, almost seven years later, MOOCs have only partially fulfilled their potential, as they manage to draw in large numbers of users, but also see the majority of them dropping out [1]. Based on an analysis of "565 course iterations from 261 different courses, with a combined 12.67 million course registrations from 5.63 million learners" [1, p. 130], it appears that the majority of people who enrol in a MOOC never enter the course (52% of the study sample), and those who do join, are mainly active during the first two weeks, after which their level of activities drops sharply [1]. We argue that a drop in activity levels may be partly due to a lack of user engagement, and MOOCs may benefit from a gamified intervention targeted at increasing engagement.…”