Dive Brief:
- Speaking at the Campus Technology conference in Boston on Wednesday, edX CEO Anant Agarwal extolled the virtues of massive open online courses and dissed traditional education for its failure to change and adopt technology.
- The head of the non-profit MOOC provider also spoke about the potential for online teaching to use big data in adapting and improving its delivery.
- Already, edX has succeeded in its goal to increase access to education, Argawal said, pointing to the first edX course he ever taught as an example. His MOOC on circuits and electronics reached 155,000 students in 162 countries — more than the total number of Massachusetts Institute in Technology alumni.
Dive Insight:
While MOOCs have been criticized for their 5% pass rate, Argawal pointed out that for MOOCs with ID verifications and student fees, the pass rate is about 60%. Merging MOOC and in-person classroom teaching concepts into a blended learning approach has also shown potential, with San Jose State University using such an approach with the circuits and electronics course and lowering the failure rate to 4% from 40%. California State University schools are using blended learning, as is MIT with 23 classes on campus with 2,800 students. Argawal said he wants edX to use the 3 billion records of student performance it has amassed so far to learn how students learn, and then use that knowledge to improve its MOOC delivery, similar to how Google continuously re-engineers its services.