Can MOOCs help professors teach traditional courses more efficiently?

Posted on June 21st, 2014

According to a new report (pdf), using free online materials such as MOOCS in traditional classes “can help colleges teach more efficiently without harming students.” In their study, researchers closely tracked 17 courses at universities across the Maryland system that incorporated “interactive online learning platforms” into existing courses, including 14 that used MOOCs from Coursera. In the side-by-side tests, which involved large, introductory courses, students in the hybrid sections “did as well or slightly better than students in the traditional sections in terms of pass rates and learning assessments.” However, while using pre-made MOOCs spared the Maryland professors from recording videos and designing content of their own, they “had to work through many types of implementation challenges, including fitting sometimes poorly matched content into their courses and technology-integration problems.”

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/can-moocs-help-professors-teach-traditional-courses-more-efficiently/53851