Propel Team
Jul 24, 2017 · 6 min read

What in the MOOC are online students thinking?

We have been following the new MOOC model (Massively Open Online Courses) for some time. MOOCs are truly disrupting the Education model for the first time in recent history. Remember Gutenberg and his printing press in the 15th century? All of a sudden, almost everyone could get access to books! We think of MOOCs as a similar, but much more powerful innovation, scaling not only content, but also teaching, peer collaboration and (almost) all the other good stuff that universities provide. But this model is still continuing to evolve, and there is not a lot of data available. So we were motivated to do some of our own original research, which we are happy to share with you here. But first, let us share a bit of background from the available secondary research below.

When you look up the number of students who took Harvard courses last year, you might find the number 22,000. But the total number is much higher, in fact 70 times higher, or close to 1.5M people. That’s because of the many students who attended Harvard’s Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in 62 different countries last year. That’s A LOT of people.

0.005% of students who took Harvard MOOC Courses (unofficial material)

Of course, in many ways, the MOOC experience is different from a traditional university experience. Amongst other things, 80% of their students have already graduated from an institution, although some schools do use MOOCs as complementary resources to their traditional classes (referred to as “hybrid” models). Students play a pretty important role in the educational experience — after all, the education system is BUILT FOR students to learn. But when we wanted to find out more about their feedback on MOOCs, we couldn’t find a lot of data. Now, the Courseras and Udacitys of the world certainly have a lot of this information, and they do share most of the positive feedback from students using their platforms. But there is little information about what a MOOC student may be missing compared to the traditional students who are actually sitting in the Harvard classrooms, or any specific improvements that can be made to this evolving educational model, from the students’ perspective.

We’re MOOC students, mentors, and innovators ourselves. So we did what any curious person would do — we decided to find out for ourselves.

What do MOOC students really think?

What’s the best way to find out what students think about their education? Just ask them. So that’s what we set out to do. We surveyed 100+ students taking MOOCs. We wanted to find the biggest obstacles (if any) that students may be facing, or improvements they may be thinking of, to see if perhaps we can tackle them together.

To start off, here’s the breakdown of the regions our student respondents come from. It’s pretty balanced with majority of respondents coming from Western Europe and North America (together — 61%).

In terms of student respondents’ age, the biggest responding age group is 25–44 year olds at 48%. North America and Europe track closely at 44% for this age group, with a bit of variation in other regions.

Ok ok, we know what you’re thinking, demographics are nice but…

So, without further ado, here’s what we found out.

“Wow, that’s interesting…”

  1. Online students say the courses they’re taking do well in meeting their expectations. Almost 63% LOVE them, however a third of them think there can be improvements.

Key takeaway: MOOC content creators and providers are doing a good job in terms of delivering on their promises!

2. Like with everything however, there’s room for improvement. The students’ biggest problems with MOOCs are:

  • Lack of personal interaction with the teacher (24%)
  • Staying motivated and organized (20%)
  • Feeling the feedback on their work wasn’t sufficient (15%)

Key takeaway: The feeling of insufficient feedback might be correlated with the fact that MOOC students miss interacting with the teacher and assignments are typically graded by peers, which is understandable due to the large volumes. Interesting nonetheless!

3. Even with the more personalized approach to learning that MOOCs enable, students still sometimes have questions that go unanswered!

  • 84% of respondents at least once had questions about the course subjects they couldn’t find answers to anywhere
  • 53% of MOOC students would love to have office hours, as a supplement to their MOOCs and only 21% say they don’t feel the need for that.
  • Interestingly, 43% of those who rarely had questions that they couldn’t find answers to, would love office hours (19% would even pay for it).

Key takeaway: The numbers aren’t scary but granted that students might want to understand the material fully, they’re important. And the need for having office hours indicates they are missing something!

4. Is there anything better at school than the breaks in between classes? It’s where lasting friendships are born (or occasionally, enemies are made), and sweethearts are found. What about MOOC students?

Key takeaway: Turns out MOOC students still want to be a part of a student community! Over 73% of MOOC students actually joined one group (e.g. Facebook group, a Meetup, or an online forum) and additional 7% wanted to do that but couldn’t do it for some reason.

5. They say one of the best forms of learning is by teaching others. 47% of our MOOC student respondents indicate they are interested in doing just that, by becoming a TA or a tutor for other fellow MOOC students.

Key takeaway: We value this result a lot — almost half of the people want to give back, without even mentioning any expectation of being compensated, or other incentives!

“MOOCs are awesome, but…”

We simply don’t know much about them yet!

The bottom line is, the current educational system provided by traditional schools simply can not meet the needs of all students globally. In the next 20 years, the number of students globally will grow to 2.7B. In order to serve those students, two schools need to be built every day for the next twenty years! This is why a disruption is absolutely necessary, and MOOCs are a great new and innovative way towards that disruption. We must all do everything we can collectively to improve the model as needed, and build an ecosystem that can support and facilitate this disruption.

We are continuing our research. We hope you enjoyed this article, if you have any questions, comments, or want to stay in touch with us, please e-mail us at Team@JoinIN.la.

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