Online not offline
Much as Higher Education would like to think
it has a monopoly on learning, it is merely one in many, many layers in the
learning cake. There is no monolithic MOOC audience. MOOCs are and will become
increasingly varied in terms of audience, subjects and pedagogy. This is the
big difference between institutional audiences and online audiences. It’s
similar to the fractional distillation that has taken place as TV viewers move
from scheduled programmes, to catch-up, to on-demand, to boxed sets. MOOCs are
not campus courses, they’re online and subject to the behavioural habits of
online learners, not the campus. There’s a big difference.
Adoption curve
A more analytic approach is to use the work of
Rogers and recognize that disruptive innovation is first used by
‘innovators, then ‘early adopters’, before moving into the early majority. It
should not surprise us in the least that the innovators and early adopters are
highly educated, with high social and financial status, time and close contact
with the innovators and the channels they use. Note that these early adopters
are not young tecchies but older people who are immersed in education. The
first wave of MOOCs were made by Universities and the innovators and early
adopters, naturally inhabit that space. Now that MOOCs are being created and
marketed beyond the early adoption phase into the early and late majority, we
will see, and already do see, different audience profiles emerging. What you
don’t do is condemn an innovation before it has had exposure to the early
majority. Things take time.
Comparisons odious if not odd
A second factor, emphasized by George Siemens
and others but seemingly ignored by many, is the simple fact that most MOOCs
are ‘open’ in the sense that one can sign up in seconds. This means that
there’s not much at stake in terms of commitment. Compare this to an expensive
University course, where you will have spent most of your life at school
working towards that goal, literally moved into new accommodation, possibly in
a far-off place, where you know almost no one. On top of this you’ve paid a large
sum of money for tuition, as well as more money on materials, travel,
accommodation and living expenses.
So, when you use the term drop-out, it
suddenly becomes inappropriate. With online, you don’t hear about drop-outs
from Wikipedia or YouTube, even long-format games. With lifelong learners
completion is not always the goal or even desirable and the comparison starts
to wane. Indeed, to compare MOOC registration and
course completion with University course registration and course completion is
almost absurd. The comparison is, if not odious, certainly odd.
Even bad comparisons work
But let’s suppose you stick
with the comparison. Look at drop-out rates in the US, as the famous Harvard
study did (2012) to show that nearly half of America’s
college students drop out before receiving a degree. The study found that only
56% of students in America’s colleges and universities graduate within six
years, while only 29% of students in two-year programs complete their degrees
within three years. High costs and crippling student loans are having an
effect. In countries where there is a large and well-developed college and
University system, this tends to be true. In for-profit colleges, the problem
is even worse. More than three-quarters of for-profit students fail to earn a
degree after six years, according to a 2011 report. All of a sudden, when you
clean out the window shoppers from the MOOC completion data, the comparison is
not half bad.
What is ‘Massive’?
So let’s re-evaluate what ‘massive’ means here? We know that
registrations have been massive in terms of the total number of students
registered, in the tens, and sometimes hundreds of thousands. But this top line
figure is a measure of innovator and early adopter curiosity, interest, window
shoppers, lurkers and learners. It is a heady fuel mixture of people who are just
browsing to serious completers. So let’s try to unpack this early adopter data.
Online habits
We know a lot about online behavior, where the majority consume, a
minority comment and an even smaller minority create. As rules of thumb we have
the 90:9:1 or 89:10:1 principles, where only 1% create content, 9% comment and
90% lurk. Web masters and marketing people use analytics to look at bounce
rate, page views and other metrics matched against goals to measure the success
of their online efforts. With MOOCs it is likely that something more akin to
these online habits and the Pareto principle is at work, with 20% of people
accounting for 80% of the active learning. In fact MOOC completion rates, if
that’s your goal are better than this.
Early adoption phase
The problem we face with MOOCs is exacerbated by the fact that we are
still in the early adoption phase where curiosity and window shopping are still
key drivers skewing the data. Early adopters tend to be those who are
well-educated and well-versed in online activity. It will take time before the
real numbers ‘settle’ into patterns that reveal real patterns of use. However,
even at this early stage, we can try to identify sub-sets within the data. With
MOOCs it is important to unpack the total registration number to reveal the
true intent and behaviours of those who register.
Non-active and Active learners
A useful distinction is between ‘active’
and ‘non-active’ learners, namely
those who have gone beyond the opening of the course and show that they intend
to persevere. Note that this does not necessarily mean complete. One could
apply a simple criterion here, of those who persevere beyond a certain point in
the course to show active participation and intent. This could be those who go
beyond the first video, first assessment and further. I’d suggest that one needs
to go further, and do a fair amount in their first visit with at least one active,
repeat visit.
Non-active
learners
These include three types:
1. Curious
2. Checkers
3. Toe dippers
1. Curious
They have no intention of carrying on or
completing the course and are just plain curious. They are curious to see what
a MOOC is, how easy it is to sign up. This group will diminish rapidly, when
their curiosity is exhausted and MOOCs become mainstream.
2. Checkers
They may be looking at a whole range of
courses on different subjects, a range of courses on the same subject, researching,
writing a journalistic piece on, aggregating MOOCs on a website. They are there
with intent but that intent has nothing to do with completion or certification.
3. Window shoppers
By far the largest group may be more than curious and register to try out
the MOOC. They will be taking a temperature check in terms of the experience
being too shallow/deep, easy/difficult, boring/engaging, irrelevant/relevant,
to the point/long winded, esoteric/practical, didactic/open, poor quality/good
quality and so on. They are still in judgment mode. As they are there without
any financial or any other type of commitment, they are happy to simply have a
peek.
Active
learners
This include three types:
1. Lifelong learners
2. Completers
3. Certification chasers
1. Lifelong learners
These are learners who are likely to already
have a degree or track record in learning at an academic level. They are
largely learning for the sale of learning and less interested in certification,
even completion, taking what they want from the course, not being concerned
about stopping. They are usually professionals with full time jobs, who find it
difficult to stick to the timetabled regime of many MOOCs, especially Coursera.
Even within this group we see ‘episodic’
and ‘binge’ learners. Episodic
learners are busy and find it difficult to follow the standard undergraduate,
week-by-week model. The course is either too fast or too slow for their needs.
The binge learners has a few times when he/she can indulge in a deep bout of
learning and doesn’t have the time to do it as regularly as the course demands.
We are already seeing data that shows how overlong courses tend to work less
well online and a move towards smaller or mini-MOOCs.
2. Completers
This group have a natural tendency to see
things through to completion. They don’t necessarily want accreditation and are
happy with a Statement or Certificate of completion.
3. Certification chasers
These are likely to be younger learners who
need certification to get into a course or job. They may also be looking to
enhance or change career.
This appropriate segmentation of the data
makes a big difference to the reported numbers. For example, the six Coursera
MOOCs run by the University of Edinburgh had 308,000 registrations with
Statements of Completion. When, however, the identified the ‘Active’ learners,
the figure was 21%.
Decent analysis of MOOC learner data needs to avid the trap of seeing
visitors as a monolithic lump. It is much more like web analytics where one is
matching visitors against goals, and different visitors have different goals.
Conclusion
It is reasonable to expect, that when MOOCs
evolve they will become shorter and more engaging. I don’t see MOOCs as having to necessarily
mimic the cohort campus model. If anything they will become less timetabled and
more asynchronous, as this fits what we already know about what happens when
offline phenomena go online. They shift towards on-demand, anywhere, anytime
access. MOOCs are already morphing towards massive audiences well beyond the
18-year-old undergraduate model, into corporates, not-for-profits, lifelong
learners, CPD, vocational and other areas of learning. HE is for a few years,
learning is for life.
