The Big Problem for MOOCs Visualized

MOOCs — they’re get­ting a lot of hype, in part because they promise so much, and in part because you hear about stu­dents sign­ing up for these cours­es in mas­sive num­bers. 60,000 signed up for Duke’s Intro­duc­tion to Astron­o­my on Cours­era. 28,500 reg­is­tered for Intro­duc­tion to Sol­id State Chem­istry on edX. Impres­sive fig­ures, to be sure. But then the shine comes off a lit­tle when you con­sid­er that 3.5% and 1.7% of stu­dents com­plet­ed these cours­es respec­tive­ly. That’s accord­ing to a Visu­al­iza­tion of MOOC Com­ple­tion Rates assem­bled by edu­ca­tion­al researcher Katy Jor­dan, using pub­licly avail­able data. Accord­ing to her research, MOOCs have gen­er­at­ed 50,000 enroll­ments on aver­age, with the typ­i­cal com­ple­tion rate hov­er­ing below 10%. Put it some­where around 7.5%, or 3,700 com­ple­tions per 50,000 enroll­ments. If you click the image above, you can see inter­ac­tive data points for 27 cours­es.

If you’re a ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist, you’re prob­a­bly a lit­tle less wowed by 3,700 stu­dents tak­ing a free course. And if you’re a uni­ver­si­ty, you might be under­whelmed by these fig­ures too, see­ing that the aver­age MOOC costs $15,000-$50,000 to pro­duce, while pro­fes­sors typ­i­cal­ly invest 100 hours in build­ing a MOOC, and anoth­er 8–10 hours per week teach­ing the mas­sive course. And then don’t for­get the wince-induc­ing con­tract terms offered by MOOC providers like edX — terms that make it hard to see how a uni­ver­si­ty will recoup any­thing on their MOOCs in the com­ing years.

Right now, uni­ver­si­ties are pro­duc­ing MOOCs left and right, and it’s a great deal for you, the stu­dents. (See our list of 300 MOOCs.) But I’ve been around uni­ver­si­ties long enough to know one thing — they don’t shell out this much cash light­ly. Nor do pro­fes­sors sink 100 hours into cre­at­ing cours­es that don’t count toward their required teach­ing load. We’re in a hon­ey­moon peri­od, and, before it’s over, the raw num­ber of stu­dents com­plet­ing a course will need to go up — way up. Remem­ber, the MOOC is free. But it’s the fin­ish­ers who will pay for cer­tifi­cates and get placed into jobs for a fee. In short, it’s the fin­ish­ers who will cre­ate the major rev­enue streams that MOOC cre­ators and providers are cur­rent­ly rely­ing on.

We have our own thoughts on what the MOOC providers need to do. But today we want to hear from those who start­ed a MOOC and opt­ed not to fin­ish. In the com­ments sec­tion below, please tell us what kept you from reach­ing the end. You’ll get extra points for hon­esty!

via O’Reil­ly