Do You MOOC?

Do you MOOC?

As there have been over 100 million students who have signed up for courses via Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs (Class Central, 2018), and since you are the kind of person who is reading a higher education blog, there is a chance that you do. Or have.

I am among the 100 million. A few years ago, I enrolled in a MOOC on the history of comic books. It was interesting and well-presented, and I could take it on my own time, and I did not complete the course. Which, it turns out, is one of the biggest problems with a promising educational disruption. Or is it?

According to one report, as of 2018 over 101 million students had participated in at least one of over 11 thousand courses offered by over 900 colleges and universities from across the globe (Class Central, 2018). Those numbers are staggering; however, the completion rates are less compelling. The average student completion rates for MOOCs fall somewhere between 5-15% (EdSurge, 2018). This appears dim, until you consider the results of the competition.

American community colleges graduate approximately 13% of their students in two years, and 22% of their students in three years, or one-and-a-half time as measured by how long a two-year degree “should” take for a full-time student (Chen, 2018). Universities fair better, but are not in a position to brag; the six-year, or time-and-a-half graduation rate, for full time university students is 60% (NCES, n.d.). This means two out of five full-time university students do not graduate within six years. Even if universities are out-performing their competition, 60% is still a failing grade in any college or university class.

We could spend time dissecting these college and university completion rates, and come up with any number of reasons to justify them. That might be an interesting exercise, but it is not the point of this discussion. What I want to point out is this: American universities have been around since the 1600’s (and are based in traditions started centuries prior). American community colleges began serving students nearly 120 years ago. MOOCs have been around since 2011. Given their very recent development, the graduation rates often negatively attributed to MOOCs as a way to discount them seem a little less dire, and a little less compelling.

Colleges and universities might learn something from the still very new MOOC experiment. MOOCs prove education can have a very broad reach at a very low cost to both students and institutions. MOOCs also prove people want educational opportunities aside from those offered by traditional institutions through traditional methods. MOOCs may currently appeal most to students who already have a degree, or those seeking professional development (Selingo, 2014), but that is not reason enough to discount them as a potentially viable option in higher education. It is important to remember American universities were once the domain of wealthy, young white men; today, we are still attempting to fully diversify higher education student populations. MOOCs may succeed at educational democratization much more quickly than their traditional counterparts.

There are certainly issues that need to be sorted out. Course transcription and transferability, tuition, financial aid regulations and obligations, and prerequisites are all potential roadblocks to the development and implementation of MOOCs by additional colleges and universities. Not to mention the well-documented digital divide, which prevents many potential students from engaging in any form of online education. Despite these concerns, and numerous others, it is premature to declare the MOOC experiment failed. We gave brick-and-mortar universities centuries to figure it out. Let’s give MOOCs at least a decade.  

If you have thoughts, experiences, or pithy remarks related to MOOCs, I'd love to hear from you. 

References

Chen, G. (2018). The Catch-22 of community college graduation rates. Community College Review.    Retrieved from https://www.communitycollegereview.com/blog/the-catch-22-of-community-college-graduation-rates

Class Central. (2018). By the numbers: MOOCs in 2018. Retrieved from https://www.class-central.com/report/mooc-stats-2018/

EdSurge. (2018). Stop asking about completion rates: Better questions to ask about MOOCs in 2019. Retrieved from https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-11-28-stop-asking-about-completion-rates-better-questions-to-ask-about-moocs-in-2019

NCES. (n.d.). Fast facts. Retrieved from https://www.communitycollegereview.com/blog/the-catch-22-of-community-college-graduation-rates

Selingo, J. J. (2014, October 29). Demystifying the MOOC. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/02/education/edlife/demystifying-the-mooc.html