MOOC Research Initiative Reports
Source: MOOC Research Initiative
From Chronicle of Higher Education blog post:
In December 2013 a group of academics gathered during a Texas snowstorm and began the second phase of a discussion about massive open online courses. They were not terribly impressed by the hype the courses had received in the popular media, and they had set out to create a better body of literature about MOOCs—albeit a less sensational one.
The MOOC Research Initiative, backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, had given many of those academics research grants to study what was going on in the online courses. Now the organization has posted preliminary findings from some of those research projects.
The findings have not yet been peer-reviewed and should not be generalized, but they do represent some of the most rigorous analysis to date on MOOCs. Following is a synopsis of the more interesting findings.
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1. If you are isolated, poor, and enamored of the prestigious university offering the MOOC you’re taking, you are less likely to complete it.
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2. Coaching students to have a healthier mindset about learning may not help in a MOOC.
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3. Paired with the right incentives, MOOCs can help prepare at-risk students for college-level work.
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4. Discussion forums in MOOCs are healthy places for the few students who use them.
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5. We still do not know if doing well in MOOCs will help underprivileged learners become upwardly mobile.