Experiences and Observations from My First MOOC

My organization like many in higher education is trying to determine how Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) can work in our existing frameworks for serving students. I volunteered to take a MOOC from start to finish and share the experience with our chancellor, board members, and anyone else in our system with an interest.  Since mine is an experience of but a single class I decided to use this blog in hopes that others may share their MOOC experiences, praises, and concerns in the comments section. So please share!

The Class: I chose to take a class through Coursera (www.coursera.org) on “Gamification” by Kevin Werbach who is an Associate Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. I very much enjoyed the class, I got a lot out of it, and I thought it was serendipitous that I should choose this class because as it progressed I saw many elements of gamification in MOOCs. For those unfamiliar with MOOCs, “massive” means many thousands can sign-up for the class and in this MOOC there were over 66K registrants. For additional background on gamification the course description can be found at:  www.coursera.org/course/gamification

The Format: I found the course design to be very straight forward, easy to understand, convenient, and similar to most online courses.  There were video lectures that were released weekly and they were supplemented by discussion forums and video office hours (Google Hangouts which due to the number in the class were limited to invitees but anyone could listen: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6_ONfLJ2mc).  Coursera also makes provisions for what they call “meetups” where students in the same geographical area could arrange face-to-face meetings with fellow students. Students were evaluated based upon their performance on 4 quizzes, 3 written assignments, and a final examination. The quizzes and the final examination consisted of multiple choice questions where a correct response could have multiple answers. The quizzes and the final exam were graded immediately by the Coursera system giving instant and detailed feedback on responses. With a penalty, you could retake any of the quizzes or the final for up to 5 times for each quiz or exam. If you did repeat a quiz or the exam you would be presented with new questions and/or previous questions phrased differently and response orders changed. There were two components of the class that stuck out as different from the typical online courses:

• Interaction with the Professor – With such a large number of students it just isn’t practical for all participating to reach out and ask the professor questions.  That said, the professor, assisted by a team of teaching assistants (TAs), did monitor the discussion forums and as the discussion threads were posted they did interject where there was value in doing so.
• Peer graded written assignments – Since it’s “massive” it’s not practical for a single professor, even when assisted by TAs to grade all written assignments.  So students are provided a grading rubric consisting of quantitative and qualitative measures for evaluating other student’s responses (requirement of evaluating 5 peers per assignment).  From my experience this is where it gets both strong and weak given the investment that the student has in the course. Participants that are motivated give great and detailed responses, others not so much. In the first grading requirement I was convinced the system was giving me responses that were poor just to test me to see if I would grade them accordingly.  In the second there were great responses that I found inspiring. In the last assignment … there were both great and mediocre responses.  

Statistics of the Class: Professor Werbach created an excellent wrap-up video of the statistics on the class that went into demographics, success rates, etc. that can be viewed at: class.coursera.org/gamification-002/lecture/170. I’d recommend watching the video, but if you're not so inclined the highlights include:

• 66K+ registrations
• 145 countries (U.S. 26%)
• Average age 33 (ranging from pre-high school to 70’s & 80’s)
• 2/3rds were male
• 77% working or otherwise not currently in school
• 80% have a 4-year college degree
• 44% have an advanced degree
• 5.6K (8.4%) successfully completed the class

The low completion rate probably sticks out to many and raises some eyebrows. To put it into perspective though, as an adjunct faculty member I taught 2-3 classes a semester for over 12 years. Considering there were anywhere from 30-45 students in each of my classes, this MOOCs 5.6K completions is more than double the number of students I ever taught in those 12 years.

Monetization/Motivation: The business model for MOOCs is obviously evolving. The system I work for recently announced (along with many others) a pilot program with Coursera (see bit.ly/16OjRZl) to test new business models and teaching methods. Nevertheless there is some revenue in the model today. At the time of my MOOC some classes, including mine, had the option of paying a fee for the “signature track.” With the signature track you had a couple of what I’ll call authentication tasks you had to do for each assignment which basically consisted of creating a biometric profile of the student’s unique typing pattern and a photo. Successful students (completing the course with a 70% or higher) who signed up for the signature track received a “verified certificate” otherwise the award was a “statement of accomplishment.” For more on the signature track see: www.coursera.org/signature/guidebook. From a revenue estimating perspective the course had 2,189 participants sign up for the signature track (≈3%). For this course the regular price of $69 was discounted to $39 which means that the signature track brought Coursera a little over $85K in revenue. How or even if any of this was shared with the professor I have no idea, but I would imagine there must be some revenue sharing (at least I would hope so). In any event the professor was able to promote his book on the subject and I’m happy to give it a plug here as well: wdp.wharton.upenn.edu/retailers/for-the-win/

Social Media and Networking: I was pleasantly surprised as to how social media came into play in this MOOC. Professor Werbach details the discussion board posts, peer assessments and Twitter post interactivity in his closing video. However not mentioned was the LinkedIn group that quickly formed and has now grown to over 455 members (many of whom have connected with one another). Posts to this group are still occurring, and professionals in the subject area that were not part of the class have joined the group and are sharing their expertise and insights on the subject as well.

Is there a MOOC in your future/past? Lifelong learners will find MOOCs to be yet another valuable avenue by which to improve their knowledge. The format is exceptionally convenient as there is no commitment upfront and if the MOOC isn’t what was expected the student can discontinue at any time. As I stated at the beginning of this blog, I’m very interested in the experiences of others with MOOCs. Please share your experiences (good and bad), motivations (for taking a MOOC or signing up for the signature track), and future plans you may have (personal or professional development you/your staff).