Thursday, September 8, 2016

Learning to Learn Online MOOC

Athabasca University (Canada) have released the preliminary results from their latest Learning to Learn Online course. This is a five week free "MOOC" about study skills, with an optional certificate of completion. As with other free courses, only a very small proportion of the students who enroll go on to complete (8% in 2016). However, it is easy to enroll in such a course and there is no penalty for non-completion and so this completion rate is not a useful measure. Just over half (52%) of the students who enrolled signed into the course. If only those students are considered, the completion rate doubles to 16%. A further indication of students who are actively involved is those who posted to course forums, of whom 40% completed the course, which is a typical figure for conventional small group, for-fee, distanced education courses. However, this course had five staff supporting only 265 active students (53 students per instructor), so is this really a Massive Open On-line Course, or just an ordinary distance education course, which happens to be free?

Learning to Learn Online Course results

2015 2016 Increase % 2016
Enrolled 1825 1262 -563
Signed into the course 916 655 -261 52%
Completed/Passed 148 106 -42 8%
Downloaded a certificate
 
143 98 -45 8%
Discussion messages 3099 1781 -1318
Messages by facilitators 1284 192 -1092
Messages by students 1815 1589 -226
Students who posted
 
310 265 -45 21%
Pre-course surveys* completed 487 289 -198 23%
User Experience surveys* completed 120 68 -52 5%
Female, pre-course 67% 65% -0.02
Female, completed 70% 68% -0.02
English first language, pre-course 63% 70% 0.07
English first language, completed 65% 74% 0.09
Holding no degree 28% 28% 0
College/undergraduate degree 31% 31% 0
Graduate student or above 41% 41% 0



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