Dive Brief:
- Coursera co-founder Andrew Ng has given a look at how concrete data can help drive student success, using what he refers to as "A/B/C/D/E/F/G testing" to find what sort of engagement drives the best results from the MOOC provider's users.
- According to Ng, Coursera has seen that sending a homework reminder via email drives engagement down, whereas sending an email praising the student results in better engagement.
- Ng says the same results could be noticed anecdotally, but it might take longer.
Dive Insight:
In a question and answer session, Ng said MOOCs still have room to improve — and data should help drive that improvement. Another topic Ng was questioned about: The potential use of something like IBM's Watson technology to auto-grade free text and offer direct tutoring to students. We'll venture to guess that might be a little further off, but it's fascinating regardless.