HarvardX and MITx: Two Years of Open Online Courses Fall 2012-Summer 2014
Name
SSRN-id2586847.pdf
Size
2.07 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
e7c695ee95557e1577111babaaeab94d
Author(s)
Ho, Andrew Dean
Chuang, Isaac
Reich, Justin
Coleman, Cody Austun
Whitehill, Jacob
Northcutt, Curtis George
Williams, Joseph Jay
Hansen, John D.
Lopez, Glenn
Petersen, Rebecca
Date Issued
March 30, 2015
Publisher
MIT Office of Digital Learning; HarvardX Research Committee
Series/Report no.
MITx Working Papers;15
Abstract
What happens when well-known universities offer online courses, assessments, and certificates of completion for free? Early descriptions of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have emphasized large enrollments, low certification rates, and highly educated registrants. We use data from two years and 68 open online courses offered by Harvard University (via HarvardX) and MIT (via MITx) to broaden the scope of answers to this question. We describe trends over this two-year span, depict participant intent using comprehensive survey instruments, and chart course participation pathways using network analysis. We find that overall participation in our MOOCs remains substantial and that the average growth has been steady. We explore how diverse audiences — including explorers, teachers-as-learners, and residential students — provide opportunities to advance the principles on which HarvardX and MITx were founded: access, research, and residential education.
Subjects
MOOC
Massive open online course
HarvardX
MITx
edX
Online learning
Distance education
Higher education
Residential learning
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Office of Digital Learning
Persistent DSpace Link
