> The report recommends that MIT explore more modular approaches to teaching — both online and on-campus. Data from the first 17 MITx and HarvardX courses indicate that only about 5 percent of registrants earn a certificate of completion.
I'm one of those people who registers for several online classes but never finish them, or many times never participate at all.
It would be helpful if they offered a "degree" of some kind for completing groups of classes. Mixing it with the concept of gamification like Khan Academy does might also help with participation.
>'It would be helpful if they offered a "degree" of some kind for completing groups of classes.'
They do.
EdX - xSeries [1]
Coursera - Specializations [2]
Udacity - Nanodegrees [3]
Obviously, no one agrees on what to call these groups. Worse, the length, cost and schedules are equally disparate which isn't a problem specific to groups, but the state of MOOCs in general.
One group offering might be 7 classes at $50 each, with each class covering 8 weeks with an estimated effort of 8-10 hours per week. Another is 9 classes at $50 each, with each class covering 4 weeks with an estimated effort of as little as 3-4 hours per week. One group can be completed in as little as three months, another requires a minimum of 3 years.
There's at least one MOOC offering "nanodegrees" for completing a series of classes, but charging $150 a month to participate is a bit on the high side for something that most employers won't care about. There's a bit of a divide between the benefit of education in general and whether that education will have a meaningful impact on your financial bottom line in the long run.
EdX offers the "x-series" - https://www.edx.org/xseries - and Coursera offers "specialisations" - https://www.coursera.org/specializations - they're charged per course. According to them, when you pay the $50+ per course, your completion rate goes up dramatically, to something like 70% - probably due to the fact you've paid something for it.
Whats worse is the poor quality of the course content compared to the real thing. MOOCs are something else, they should be in the same category as a YouTube video.
I am suspicious of this claim because I recently did an analysis of this data: http://minimaxir.com/2014/07/online-class-charts/
The average amount of students who complete classes that they've registered for is about 3.4%, much lower than they indicate: http://minimaxir.com/img/online-class-charts/class-attendanc...