Grading the MOOCs
More than four years after Harvard and MIT launched the nonprofit learning platform edX, a joint research team from the two schools have released a report on the online classrooms. What they found was increased participation by diverse participants, many of whom are teachers. “HarvardX and MITx: Four Years of Open Online Courses,” released today, examined massive open online courses (MOOCs) the schools launched between fall 2012 and summer 2016. The report — one of the largest surveys of MOOCs to date —builds on benchmark reports from 2014 and 2015 that described the first two years of open online courses. It is the latest product of a cross-institutional research effort led by study co-authors Andrew Ho of Harvard and Isaac Chuang of MIT. “We explored 290 Harvard and MIT online courses, a quarter-million certifications, 4.5 million participants, and 28 million participant-hours,” said Ho, chair of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning (VPAL)...