MIT Tech Review offers a synopsis of current MOOC studies – completion, etc. They cite a Princeton study that says “participation falls precipitously and continuously throughout a course and that almost half of registered students never post more than twice to the forums. What’s more, the participation of a teacher doesn’t improve matters. Indeed, they say there is some evidence that a teacher’s participation in an online discussion actually increases the rate of decline.” There is an art – and best practices – to facilitating discussion boards and I do wonder if these teachers/instructors are ever given that insight before diving in.
via Data Mining Exposes Embarrassing Problems for Massive Open Online Courses | MIT Technology Review.
New Images of Education 