

MOOC Completion Rates - jnazario
http://www.katyjordan.com/MOOCproject.html

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kkowalczyk
I guess people see 10-20% completion rate and think: this is bad.

Let's do some math.

At my university (one of the biggest in Poland), there were 150 people
majoring in CS per year.

According to the article, an average MOOC enrollment is 50.000. Let's assume
10% completion rate.

That's 5.000 people. It would take my university 33 years to graduate that
many people (assuming 100% completion rate).

The cost per person? Several orders of magnitude smaller per student for MOOC.

Scalability? Almost effortless for MOOC, almost non-existant for the
university (to double the number of students they would have to double the
number of professors, double the number of buildings etc.).

What happens when you fail? At MOOC, try again. At university - you're out.

There are many reasons why completion rates are much better at university (you
paid for it, you value it more; more external pressures (your peers, your
parents), motivational support from your fellow students; the way you think
about it (university: I have to do it or else it's really bad; mooc: no
biggie, I can always do it again).

MOOC destroys traditional education at almost every other metric.

It's a classic Innvator's Dillema: a product that is not as good as what
exists but so much better at some important things (cost, convenience) that
it'll grow like weeds and will become better at things it's not good at (like
retention) faster than incumbents becoming better at matching MOOC at price,
convenience.

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moocow01
"According to the article, an average MOOC enrollment is 50.000. Let's assume
10% completion rate. That's 5.000 people. It would take my university 33 years
to graduate that many people (assuming 100% completion rate)."

You are comparing a completion rate for 1 class to the completion rate for
graduation at a university (consisting of a LOT of classes). If the completion
rate for 1 class is 10% I cant imagine how low the completion rate would be
for a whole degree assuming it would consist of somewhere around 20-40
classes.

~~~
kkowalczyk
Your nitpicking is correct. I don't think it changes the big picture, though,
so it's kinda impotent nitpicking for nitpicking's sake.

If I were to be pedantic about every little detail, I would end up with
unified theory of the universe.

But since you brought it up: MOOC will also dramatically alter how we look at
higher ed.

For historical reasons, my CS department emerged from EE department, since
electronics existed before computers. As a result, I had to take courses in
analog electronics, semi-conductors and what not. Out of 5 years of study,
about 3 were relevant to CS.

I hated those courses, they proved to be useless in my programming career and
yet, I had no choice.

At the same time I couldn't have taken a course in Greek history, even if I
also liked Greek history (Spartans, those buff, semi-naked men!) in addition
to programming.

The future will not be like that. The future of higher ed will be à la carte.

People will no longer get a major in CS, they'll take whatever courses they
like and think are useful in finding employment.

It's happening already - Udacity already made a big deal (rightfully so) about
people who found employment at good companies after completing merely few
courses.

(as an aside, the rarely spoken truth about programming is that you don't
really need education; I don't credit my university with teaching me much
about what's actually relevant to real-life programming)

~~~
tripzilch
While I agree that MOOC is absolutely going to disrupt traditional
college/university schooling, I disagree with a couple of your arguments.
Actually no, scratch that, now that I think about it, if I had been able to
pick my own curriculum then yeah-- _(snip a bunch of stuff about what I myself
learned, did not learn, would have picked, etc. nobody cares about that!)_
\--maybe I would not have learned AS much, but like you say, at least most of
it would have been useful to my personal development. And I could have patched
some gaps in my knowledge (Analysis) that later on gave me trouble with
advanced courses that I really could have gone for otherwise.

And the GP comment was not nitpicking. Nitpicking is when someone makes a big
deal out of a small thing. Just because the error they pointed out does not
invalidate your argument, does not make it nitpicking. Yours was a pretty big
error: comparing dropout rates for a single class to those of an entire
education. And it deserves pointing out, because such a "little detail" has a
good chance of causing confusion later on in the discussion. And you calling
it "pedantic" really does injustice to the GP calling out a genuine error.
It's not like they were being rude or annoying about it. And I admit, this
paragraph can be considered both nitpicking and pedantic, I still want to say
it because you could have been more polite about it. "Right. While that
doesn't invalidate my argument, _thanks_ for the correction."

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ics
I sign up for just about every one that looks interesting, obviously without
the time to finish them all. The reason is quite simply because I want to look
at the materials on my time, occasionally take part in the discussions, and
try out the assignments here and there that look particularly challenging.
Last I checked, you _had_ to be registered to view any of the materials on EdX
and Coursera which is pretty much why I do it this way.

~~~
waterlesscloud
Yeah, I'm pretty much the same. Which should be completely fine with anyone,
since it's putting me way ahead in terms of learning from where I would have
been without the course.

Completion rate is only one measure of these courses, and I'm not at all sure
it should be the most important one.

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tzs
The last MOOC I took was MIT's introduction to solid state chemistry (great
course, BTW). Before an actual MIT student can take that course on campus, the
go through a pre-screening process that ensures:

1\. The student has the necessary background knowledge that the course
assumes,

2\. The student has the necessary skill required for the course,

3\. The student has the necessary motivation to do the work,

4\. The student has the time to devote to the course.

There's also a pre-screening process for people who wish to take the online
course through edx.org. This pre-screen process ensures:

1\. The student can successfully create an edx.org account and click a sign up
button for the course.

Given this huge difference in screening of students, and the fact that the
online course is for the most part not "dumbed down" compared to the on campus
course[1] , I would absolutely gobsmacked if the MOOC version of the course
came within an order of magnitude of the completion rate of the on campus
course.

[1] Online students were given 72 hours on the exams, to allow for computer
and network outages, and to give more flexibility in accommodating their lives
outside of the course. On campus students were given 3 hours for the exams. I
think they said the content of the exams was the same.

~~~
diminish
MOOCs are still in the experimental phase. I finished 1, and about to finish
another soon. I believe, there is still a lot to innovate when it comes to
giving the lecture and evaluating the student.

I also believe, a major goog/fb scale company will raise for everyone to get
continuous education.

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arikrak
Its silly to criticize them for rates under 20% since many people sign up just
to see what it's like without actually planning on finishing it. What would be
more relevant is to see what percent of serious committed students finish a
course. E.g. what percent of students who pay for a course end up finishing
it?

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pohl
Of the MOOCs I've participated in, the student surveys have never asked the
most relevant question I can think of with respect to completion rates: "do
you (or did you) intend to complete the course?"

Anybody here ever been asked that?

~~~
tripzilch
Very good point. Of course, for a completely fair comparison you need to ask
the same question (before the course starts) to the traditional students. I
expect it can't be much more than a percent or so, but it depends on whether
the university penalizes students for signing up for a course they don't
finish (in my years of college, the CS department didn't seem to care very
much. It was very different for other departments, though).

Of course, without penalties, you will get students that start out a semester
following more courses than they can finish, only to decide later on which one
to drop. I'm not entirely sure how that translates to MOOCs, though.

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ecmendenhall
This is interesting, but I think completion rates (and enrollments, to a
degree) are bogus statistics. All the incentives are aligned toward signing up
for lots of courses, with or without any intention to finish. I'm "enrolled"
in 13 Coursera classes at the moment, but only active in two (and something
close to this has been my moving average for the last six months).

The only cost to me is a few too many automated emails. And since course
quality still varies widely, trying out lots of courses and sticking with the
best ones is a good strategy.

~~~
MaysonL
Yeah, I've signed up for about a dozen Coursera, Udacity and CalTech courses
over the past year, and finished 3 with enough work for certificate of
completion, and put in enough work on a few more to get something out of them.

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jankins
I think the data is interesting, but the point it infers is absolutely moot: I
have personally derived a a HUGE amount of educational value from several
MOOC's that I never completed. That's part of the beauty: you can learn what
you need to learn, and you're not forced into a box that the course
prescribes. You can pick-and-choose your own learning process.

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guwhoa
Could it also be that many people will sign up in order to get access to
certain materials, but then not end up completing all of the
assignments/exams?

I don't have any experience with MOOC's, so I'm curious as to how these peer
graded systems work and why they result in lower completion rates.

~~~
quavtum
I have signed up for several courses on coursera, but have completed only one.
Because of time constraints, I just sign up, and then go through the materials
at my leisure.

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bayesianhorse
I don't care about Mooc completion rate at all. If for example only a few
hundred people completed the course, this means that the course had brought
educational value to thousands.

For some professors the kickback value might play a bigger role. Some courses
on coursera are just not taught as widely as the professors would like to have
it. For example Hinton's Neural Network course, or the one about Quantum
Computation. In these cases, a few hundred completers would be plenty to
justify the effort of the authors (in my opinion at least).

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ams6110
Interesting in what that might say about job candidates who have actually
completed a number of MOOCs. That would put them in the top 10% or so by that
measure, for whatever that's worth. It at least says something about their
ability to start something and finish it.

~~~
yen223
Are MOOC completions something that job interviewers actually look out for?

I have always used MOOCs to learn, not to get certified.

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largesse
I don't know why people are seeing low MOOC completion rates as a problem. It
just makes completion more valuable as a credential. That plus the fact that
MOOCs have wider accessibility should make traditional institutions very
scared. It's the MOOCs' game to lose.

