The thing about MOOCs is that a lot of the classes are hard, really hard. This is not remedial algebra so lots of people are not going to be able to learn the material and that's fine. Why is it a failure if 90% of the students fail to complete the course? Likely 100x more students are taking and passing the class then would have otherwise done so at a traditional institution.

For example, with regards to the MITX 6002x course:

"MIT reports that 155,000 people registered for MITx 6.002x and of those, approximately 23,000 tried the first problem set, 9,000 passed the midterm, and 7,157 passed the course as a whole. According to MITx: "… if the number is looked at in absolute terms, it had as many students as might take the course in 40 years at MIT.”"

http://www.nebhe.org/thejournal/disruptive-innovation-changi...

I don't think any of them are particularly hard. Most of the problem with MOOCs is that the courses just aren't engaging without classroom participation by instructors, and most of them have no penalty for failing to complete the classes. Hell, I'm pretty sure I signed up for that MIT course. Then real life got in the way, and I was spending about 60-80 hours a week trying to get a project out the door.

I think the best solution is to have students learn at their own pace using MOOCs and supplement that with teachers in classrooms. I remember that I was way behind in classes until I hit 2nd or 3rd grade, and then our teachers allowed us to work through various workbooks at our own pace. Within a couple weeks I not only had caught up to my peers, but I was outstripping them at a very fast clip. I think that a lot of really smart kids probably have similar issues... the pace of lowest common denominator teaching which dominates both public and private classrooms can cause really bright kids to be frustrated and ultimately apathetic.

There is a social aspect to schooling that causes a lot of hangups with both teachers and parents alike. Kids who are smarter than their peers have no recourse other than being pushed up grade levels, which brings about its own set of negative challenges. By creating a system where students can learn though MOOCs and have teachers who can aid them, the 3rd grader who should be learning at an 8th grade level can stay with his age group and get that social education which is ultimately just as important as the mathematical and science education.

    When 90% of your "students" fail to complete the courses, you have an epic failure on your hands. MOOCs are not working.

I completed every course I signed up for when I was going to university. Completion percentage was important because I was, and still am, paying to be there. As a result, I enrolled in very little that I was simply curious about. Virtually every class I took was a step toward a degree.

Since graduating, I've enrolled in a handful of MOOCs. I've finished less than half of these courses, but they have satisfied my curiosity and have given me something new and different to learn. I most certainly would not have paid for the experience, but I feel I'm better off because of it. I'd say this is working and far from an epic failure.

It starts to look a little different when you see people trumpeting MOOCs as "the future of higher education," though.

The thing about MOOCs is that to attract funding, media attention, and participation from big-name universities and top teaching talent -- all the things you'd desperately want to have if you were the one pitching them, in other words -- they really need MOOCs to work as something bigger than just a sideline for the intellectually curious, because the market for "a sideline for the intellectually curious" isn't big enough to attract any of those things on its own. It's a niche market at best.

Higher education as a sector, on the other hand, is anything but a niche market; so if MOOCs could be positioned as The Future of Higher Education, the thing that is going to replace universities in the 21st century, that would suit their advocates' interests nicely. But the data coming out of the MOOC experiments to date make them look less and less like the sort of thing you'd want to bet your kid's future on exclusively if you had any alternatives at all, which undermines that positioning.

For people fully devoted to studying, and with some sort of extrinsic incentive to complete the courses, I imagine that the completion rate would be significantly higher. When I was at MIT, some of the courses worked almost exactly like MOOCs do now, and just as many people completed those as the traditional courses.

With MOOCs, a ton of the takers are not full-time students. I've taken some MOOC courses and only completed one (probabilistic graphical models). The main reason is that I have much higher priorities now, and the courses are on a strict schedule. The first time there's a choice between getting a piece of code finished that I need for a business deal done and finishing a problem set, that problem set is not getting finished.

In other words, it works as much as you want it to work. Similar to how a "real" college experience works, with the difference being a significant financial investment.

"Also, there is no "revolution" here"

I tend to agree. Actually, I don't see much improvement over a book. I rather have a well-written book in my hand rather than having to go through so many videos.

For me, the main advantage is easy and free access. Also, they make it easier to pace oneself, which is one of the hard part with self-teaching.

"When 90% of your "students" fail to complete the courses, you have an epic failure on your hands. "

What is the percentage of dedicated students, that have the right background to understand the material, complete the course?

"MOOCs are not working."

If working is defined in term of completion rate, they are not. But it's not the right metric.

> > When 90% of your "students" fail to complete the courses, you have an epic failure on your hands.

> What is the percentage of dedicated students, that have the right background to understand the material, complete the course?

What we have now is too much marketing. The reason 90% of students fail to complete the course is because 90% of them aren't really students. But the MOOC purveyors insist on calling them that despite the fact that a lot of people enroll in a course they don't have time/ability for. And people do that because there's no reason not to.

From a particular perspective, MOOCs aren't working, but I don't know if "percent completing" is the best metric to use when it comes to MOOCs. I've completed about a dozen MOOCs, but I've started and abandoned a fair number too. I think just having the exposure to a wide variety of areas of knowledge, and being able to easily jump into education with a structured format, but not necessarily feel financially compelled to stick with it, has been helpful to me.

From a "job credentials" / "factory-based education" approach, MOOCs may not fit the bill, but I think they provide something really useful just by making knowledge of different concepts available to more people.

I think you have highlighted an important distinction. Online learning opens the door to a large number of students, with an even larger number of reasons for taking/missing the courses. (Subject awareness, knowledge, credentialing, mastery, etc.) With traditional course structures, you could expect students to complete/cheat the course for credit, but now they can learn parts of a subject and change their minds. It has exposed the vast differences between student motivations. (A disinterested student no longer has to cheat their way out of the course.)

Previously, to change your goal in the course was considered a personal fault. But, now the lectures are recorded and the tests mostly graded by computer. The deadlines are almost artificial constraints. (This assumes the goal of the course is to master the material, and not credentialing.)

I have failed to complete numerous Coursera courses and other MOOCs, not out of missing motivation, but out of scheduling, life, and complexity. I normally end up downloading the lectures, after the fact, to gain exposure to the subject matter, because my goal had to change from mastery to just understanding the subject matter. I no longer consider that failure.

The MOOCs may have some business challenges with a 90% failure rate, assuming they intend to make money from graduates, but it is no indication of problems with the service from an end-user perspective.

I've signed up for a few courses now with no intent of using them as a school, just as supplemental material to augment my own personal learning venture. I don't really care about the tests or homework prescribed by the service, and I certainly don't care about any kind of certificate of completion.

I don't consider my usage habits a failure though. In each case I came away with what I had hoped to learn when signing up.

How I see it, even if only a small percentage of students complete a course, that's still a relatively large number. I personally know a few people who have benefited greatly from them. I believe MOOCs are here to stay.

I pretty much intentionally "fail" my MOOC courses. I have a full-time job plus a lot of side projects. I spend what time I can on Coursera but I sign up for more courses than I could possibly have time to complete.

But I've still learned a lot, and I've been using some of the stuff I've learned in those side projects.