October 25, 2012

Should we be spooked by MOOCs?

Oct. 25, 2012 at 11:15 AM | By Todd Bloom | Comment Count

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are a popular topic in higher education. But what will be their impact on student learning and outcomes? Are they a short-lived trend or a means to transform education opportunities for all types of learners?

The idea of scalable free online courses has gained traction quickly: the for-profit company Coursera, for example, recently added 16 higher education partners, more than doubling the number of institutions they work with and expanding the number of courses they offer to nearly 200. And edX, a nonprofit founded by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology now hosts courses from Berkeley and the University of Texas System as well.

What type of learning experiences do MOOCs offer? Like online learning in K-12, the MOOCs with the most successful student outcomes impart discrete knowledge and focus on technical content — STEM courses, for example.

While MOOCs give large numbers of people access to the course content of renowned institutions, the scale of the classes limits the support available for students. Contrary to in-person and traditional online courses, students generally don’t receive help from the instructor when they raise their hands or exhibit other signs of needing assistance.

MOOCs normally do enable peer interaction, but beyond crowdsourcing, successful students must be independent and thrive in a relatively inflexible instructional environment. EdX did a limited study of students who performed well in a MOOC and found most had taken a similar course before and had completed any suggested academic preparation.

Students have a variety of reasons for taking MOOCs, which tend to fall in three categories:

Personal satisfaction and growth
Mastery of content that can be shown to an employer
Academic credit (see LearningCounts.org as an example)

This entry is an excerpt from the Learn More MN Blog, published on October 19, 2012.