Participation and Performance in 8.02x Electricity and Magnetism: The First Physics MOOC from MITx

Abstract

Massive Open Online Courses are an exciting new avenue for instruction and research, yet they are full of unknowns. In the Spring of 2013, MITx released its first introductory physics MOOC through the edX platform, generating a total enrollment of 43,000 students from around the world. We describe the population of participants in terms of their age, gender, level of education, and country of origin, highlighting both the diversity of 8.02x enrollees as well as gender gap and retention. Using three midterm exams and the final as waypoints, we highlight performance by different demographic subpopulations and their retention rates. Our work is generally aimed at making a bridge between available MOOC data and topics associated with the Physics Education Research community.