Why Free Online Classes Are Still the Future of Education | WIRED
... team of researchers out of MIT, Harvard, and China’s Tsinghua University—all schools that offer MOOCs—released a study showing that students who attended a MIT physics class online learned as effectively as students who took the class in person. What’s more, the results were the same, regardless of how well the online students scored on a pre-test before taking the class.
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Big MOOC on CampusIn addition to connecting people to education online, MOOCs are also starting to find their way on campus, as universities like MIT and others are adopting what’s known as a blended learning model. In a blended learning environment, students receive most of their lectures by video so they can spend class time doing hands on work. At MIT, Agarwal says, two out of every three undergrads use edX as part of their on campus courses.
Another unintended consequence of MOOCs is the massive amount of data they produce on how people learn best. EdX has found, for instance, that the longer a video lecture runs, the less time students spend watching it. So if a video lasts 40 minutes, students may only watch it for 2. If it’s 6 minutes long, they’ll watch the whole thing.
Such insight questions the very format of the college lecture, which often involves a professor pontificating on a topic for an hour or more. “It says learners want to learn in bite-sized chunks,”...
... Not only that, but edX is also offering courses in college admissions guidance, where students and parents can learn about things like attaining financial aid and writing a college essay. Such skills have also become casualties of budget cuts, as schools reduce the number of guidance counselors on staff. “Now you don’t have to have a rich school district to get good guidance,” Agarwal says.
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