Are MOOCs a failure?
Read this interesting thought from Dr. Joshua Kim, director of Digital Learning Initiatives al Dartmouth University, from Inside Higher Ed:
“Those of us participating in the open online education movement (…) never thought that MOOCs would disrupt higher ed. We create open online courses because offering educational opportunities to the world’s learners is both aligned with our missions, and because we think that participating in this movement is a good way to learn about learning.”
And a good example of the success of the open education (or open courses) movement is edX. Dr. Joshua Kim is sharing these mind blowing numbers:
- There are 8.3 million (unique) lifelong learners on the edX platform.
- Between 2012, when edX started, and today – there have been 27 million course enrollments.
- Over 1,000 courses have been offered.
- There have been over 2,300 faculty and staff who have taught on edX.
- Over 840,000 certificates have been earned by edX learners.
- EdX has over 100 schools, institutes and organizations in the Consortium creating open online courses.
Who exactly are all these lifelong learners on the edX platform?
- Seven-in-ten lifelong learners are 25 years old or older.
- The median age of an edX learner is 29.
- About 36 percent are women, and each year the proportion of women learners on the edX platform grows. It will be interesting to see if the gender distribution for open online learning starts to match that for post-secondary education as a whole (~57%).
- Over two-thirds have a bachelor degree or higher, with over a quarter having a masters. (And 4% having a PhD).
And where do edX’s lifelong learners come from?
- There are lifelong learners in every country of the world (save North Korea).
- A bit over a quarter (27%) of edX learners come from the U.S. The next biggest country is India (11%), the U.K. and Brazil (both 4%) and China, Canada, and Mexico (3% each).
- Over four-in-ten edX learners live in emerging economy countries.
“Does Coursera, NovoEd, FutureLearn, Canvas.net, and other open online learning platforms report similar levels and trends?”, wonders Dr. Kim.
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Inside Higher Ed, July 21: The Scope of edX
