(Dis)Organization and Success in an Economics MOOC

摘要

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have experienced a fast cycle of hype and disappointment. In November 2012, the New York Times proclaimed 2012 to be the year of the MOOC. The excitement was based on the promise that the world can now have access to a wide variety of courses from the best universities. However, on December 12, 2013, a Washington Post article headline was "Are MOOCs Already Over?" The main problem that MOOCs face is that few users actually complete the class. For example, a widely publicized study by the Graduate School of Education at UPenn, based on a million participants in the first 17 UPenn courses offered on the Coursera platform, finds that only 5 percent of those who register for a class actually complete the course (Perna et al. 2013).