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For Best Results, Pair MOOCs With In-Person Support

Edsurge

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) transfixed higher education in the early 2010s, so much so that The New York Times dubbed 2012 "The Year of the MOOC." At the time, many thought MOOCs might become a replacement for both classroom instruction and ingrained models of learning. It’s easy to see why.

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Article in Journal ‘Science’ Argues MOOC Participation is Declining as Providers Pivot

Edsurge

What lessons can be learned from the rise and pivot of MOOCs, those large-scale online courses that proponents said would disrupt higher education? At the start of the MOOC trend in 2012, the promise was that the free online courses could reach students who could not afford or get access to other forms of higher education.

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The Great Education Equalizer? New Study Shows MOOCs Have Not Yet Fulfilled Their Promise as a Force for Equity

Digital Promise

The latest piece of news on MOOCs — massive online open courses — suggests that they may not yet be the great democratizer of education that they were envisioned to be. 12, shows that, generally, MOOCs have not reached such a demographically broad audience. The Futures of MOOCs. So do MOOCs have any transformative power?

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Stop Asking About Completion Rates: Better Questions to Ask About MOOCs in 2019

Edsurge

As an instructional designer who has been building MOOCs for the past five years, I’ve been asked this question more times than I count. MOOCs have been called abysmal , disappointing failures. The average completion rate for MOOCs (including the ones I design) hovers between 5-15 percent. This skepticism is not unwarranted.

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The Metamorphosis of MOOCs

Edsurge

At a recent meeting of educational technology policy advisors, a well-informed university CIO casually declared that MOOCs were history. Increasingly, MOOCs are being packaged into series of courses with a non-degree credential being offered to those who successfully complete the series. For example: Who is paying for the courses?

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Could Remixing Old MOOCs Give New Life to Free Online Education?

Edsurge

It’s common these days to hear that free online mega-courses, called MOOCs, failed to deliver on their promise of educating the masses. Now, one of the first professors to try out MOOCs says he has a way to reuse bits and pieces of the courses created during that craze in a way that might deliver on the initial promise.

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Massive Study of Online Teaching Ends With Surprising — and ‘Deflating’ — Result

Edsurge

MIT professor Justin Reich and several colleagues just completed one of the largest-ever research studies exploring teaching techniques in online higher education, involving nearly 250,000 students from nearly every nation on the planet. After all, he and his collaborators did get significant results in their earlier, smaller studies.

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