Dive Brief:
- Looking back at the last few years of massive open online course implementation, there are a handful of key takeaways for colleges and universities considering how to proceed.
- To start, eCampus News reports, MOOCs can’t benefit as many people as they claim to be able to and they cost more to develop than many think, even though few institutions are focusing on cost reduction as a core element of their initiatives.
- MOOC trends include condensing content into shorter snippets, designing courses with distinct student engagement patterns in mind, and tailoring MOOCs to institutional missions, incorporating the platform into the curricula for traditional students, too.
Dive Insight:
MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence lab studied the ways 100,000 students interacted with course material through edX. They tuned out during PowerPoints, paid closer attention to fast-talking lecturers, stayed engaged for the duration of short videos but stopped watching longer ones, appreciated pauses to decipher complicated content, and responded best to MOOC content created specifically for online delivery. MOOC creators should be keeping these lessons in mind. While the MOOC revolution didn’t necessarily come to pass, disrupters are still tweaking the model, hoping to come back strong.