Dive Summary:
- New data from edX provides a limited look into the basic demographic information of users who registered for a MOOC and then performed well enough to pass.
- The survey wasn't limited to users who passed the final exam in the course "Circuits & Electronics," but its timing made it much more likely that it would predominantly be taken by the 6,000 or so (out of the initial 155,000) who were still around at the end of the course.
- Of particular interest, 80% of respondents--whose ages range from 14 to 74--said they had previously taken a "comparable" course at a traditional university, with two-thirds of that 80% reporting the MOOC version was better.
From the article:
As the MOOC buzz continues to reverberate across higher education, the question of which subjects and populations these massive open online courses are best-suited to remains a mystery. The data released so far by the companies that run MOOC platforms have offered little insight beyond what countries students are logging in from and some information on who took a particular computer science course. ...