The Center for Benefit-Cost Studies of Education at Columbia University’s Teachers’ College recently published a 211-page report exploring “the goals of institutions creating or adopting MOOCs and how these institutions define effectiveness of their MOOC initiatives.” Through interviews with 80 individuals at 62 institutions, the report states that “colleges and universities have adopted several different stances towards engaging with MOOCs and are using them as vehicles to pursue multiple goals. Some institutions are actively developing MOOCs and may be termed ‘producers,’ some are using MOOCs developed by other institutions in their programs and could be termed consumers, and a few are doing both.” The report identifies six goals from the 29 institutions in the study that offered MOOCs: extending reach, building brand, reducing costs or increasing revenues, improving educational outcomes, innovation in teaching and learning, and research. Amongst the report’s conclusions is that MOOCs could potentially affect higher education by offering participants credentials of economic value and catalyzing the development of true adaptive learning experiences.
http://cbcse.org/wordpress/wp-content/MOOCs-Expectations-and-Reality.pdf