Dive Brief:
- A new study shows that a massive open online course can be just as effective as an on-campus course in the same subject.
- The study, which appears in the September issue of the International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, calculated rates of learning by students in MIT mechanics courses taught through a flipped classroom and a MOOC.
- Researchers found that even though on-campus students received extra instruction, they showed the same levels of weekly improvement as the MOOC students.
Dive Insight:
The study also showed that within the MOOC, the students achieved “significant and roughly equal learning” in several categories of students, including those with high school or less education versus those with advanced college degrees, those with good preparation in math and physics versus those who lacked preparation, and students who showed high ability on a pretest versus those who showed low ability. The introductory Newtonian mechanics course was taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to students who had earlier received a grade of less than a C in a course on the same subject, Campus Technology reported. Classroom time was devoted to teaching problem-solving skills, while the EdX MOOC platform delivered the online content. Later, EdX added the course to its MOOC offering.