• How did the pilot MOOCs turn out?

  • How did the pilot MOOCs turn out?

    • Another article about the recent MOOCs and some initial results from colleges.  
  • A year ago, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awarded $550,000 to 12 colleges and universities, including three community colleges: Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C) in Ohio, Mt. San Jacinto College in California and Wake Technical Community College in North Carolina. Gates separately bestowed $1 million to an effort to bring edX, a joint effort of Harvard and MIT to provide MOOCs, to both Bunker Hill Community College and Massachusetts Bay Community College.

  • Cuyahoga also offered a pre-algebra course—which was proctored four times in March, April, May and June—designed to help students with “leapfrogging into higher level math courses,” says Sasha Thackaberry, district director of eLearning Technologies at Tri-C. “If they complete this MOOC, they will be closer to college ready.”

    • Stay tuned for more data!  We’re currently conducting an analysis and will have results to share soon.
  • Final results showed that 1,400 students at Tri-C enrolled in the course and slightly more than half (719) completed the survey. Of those who accessed course material, 18 percent completed the course, Thackaberry says.

    • Our 18% success rate is about double the national average for MOOCs.  What made ours different?  A different target market for sure – for preparation, not for students with advanced degrees or programming skills.  Not for professional development, but for college readiness!  Also, we used game mechanics to motivate and sustain student interest and performance.

  • Designed using game mechanics, the course provided reinforcement to students by creating a Survivor-esque wraparound story that continued on four levels; one needed to hit 80 percent or better correct answers to move on to the next level.

     

    “The quicker we can get them through developmental education and actually working on their college coursework toward their degree, the better it is for the student but also the more statistically likely it is that they will complete their degree,” Thackaberry says. “The MOOC is just another way to help with that.”

  • “In collaboration with faculty, we’re going to see if this is something we want to sustain moving forward or abandon,” Thackaberry says. “We’re not just doing it because it’s new and cool. If they work, we want to partner with faculty and scale it. If they don’t work, we want to focus our attention on the things that do work.”

    • True!  We don’t do stuff just for fun.  We need to see if it fills a critical need for our students, if it’s effective, and how we can work with faculty to create it for our unique environment.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.