MOOC research initiative participants release results

Posted on June 1st, 2014

The MOOC Research Initiative recently released the results from 22 projects which examined “everything from how social networks form in MOOCs to how the courses can be used for remedial education.” While some of the research confirmed widely held beliefs, other projects casted doubts. For example, a project focusing on student engagement by John Whitmer, program manager of academic technology and analytics at the California State University System, found that 23 percent of students engaged meaningfully with the content in a remedial English writing MOOC even though only eight percent of the 48,174 enrolled actually passed the course. The MOOC Research Initiative was funded by an $840,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the full results for all projects can be found at http://www.moocresearch.com/reports.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/06/10/after-grappling-data-mooc-research-initiative-participants-release-results