MOOCs Show Similar Student Behaver to Conventional Courses

The edX consortium of Massive Open Online Course providers have identified two research papers published about the first course “Circuits and Electronics” (MIT MOOC,6.002x). These papers are reassuring in that they show a patter of behavior by students much the same as for conventional on-line courses and face to face classes. The major difference to conventional courses in the low completion rate, with 95% of the students not completing “Circuits and Electronics”. One of the factors which was found to aid completion was the student studying with a partner (as is that case with conventional courses). Students also showed the usual behavior, hitting the textbook shortly before an assessment deadline. As with other part-time e-learning courses, students studied on weekends.

As with most voluntary discussion forms, only a small proportion of students participated (3%). As with conventional e-learning courses participation in the edX forums correlated with success in the course.

The papers are:

• Studying Learning in the Worldwide Classroom: Research into edX’s First MOOC, Lori Breslow, David E. Pritchard, Jennifer DeBoer, Glenda S. Stump, Andrew D. Ho and Daniel T. Seaton , RPA Journal, June 14, 2013, 
• Teaching Electronic Circuits Online: Lessons from MITx’s 6.002x on edX, Piotr F. Mitros, Khurram K. Afridi , Gerald J. Sussman, Chris J. Terman, Jacob K. White , Lyla Fischer and Anant Agarwal,
  

  IEEE, May 19, 2013