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By: Matthew LeBar
Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are often described as the future of education — or at least a significant part of it. But there may be a significant problem with them: a very small proportion of students who start them actually finish. This poses a serious threat to their legitimacy. Many are beginning to think that if less than 10% of students even complete MOOCs, they must be useless. This worry is largely unfounded, since people benefit even without completion.
Some have argued that completion is not a good metric of the benefits of these classes, since MOOCs don’t have to replace physical courses. Because they are so much cheaper than physical courses — they’re often free — they do not and should not provide the same services as classroom courses. Unlike physical courses, or even university specific online courses, there’s not much additional payoff for completion of the course.
In this case, MOOCs can work similarly to online tutors that already exist, like Khan Academy or PatrickJMT (Just Math Tutorials). Students can watch these videos on websites like youtube.com to supplement their in class instruction. These videos are often more useful than the lectures themselves, since they can be re-watched and the instructors are as good, if not better than the professors of physical courses to whom teaching is a secondary priority behind research.
However, data suggest that most of the students taking these courses are not doing it for a degree: a survey of 35,000 MOOC students found that 79 to 86 percent of students already have a college degree (the percentages vary from country to country). Many of the students took MOOCs to help them in their current job or in getting a new one, while only 13% took it to work towards a degree.
Someone who works with computers, or who wants to, might take a MOOC on computer science — of which there are plenty. The knowledge they gain, even if they don’t get a diploma from the class, helps them with their job or in the market. They don’t need to complete the entire class or get a certification of completion to benefit from a MOOC.
Completion rates are not, and should not be the goal of MOOCs, and we shouldn’t write them off because students don’t finish. MOOCs can be taken for the knowledge they offer, to supplement other courses, or even for the sheer enjoyment of learning. Unlike university-offered courses, MOOCs offer significant gains to their students even if they are not completed.
Matthew LeBar is a researcher at The Center for College Affordability and Productivity.
