Digital Delights

A lot of people have asked whether completion rates are the right way of framing the success of a MOOC; I agree that there is much more to the potential positive impacts of MOOCs for students than completion rate but, at the moment, completion rate is what the providers are measuring most consistently.

In my mind, we should augment the models we use to evaluate MOOCs rather than throw the baby out with the bathwater. The challenge, therefore, is to move beyond the simplistic view of one type of student with one type of goal (course completion), and find patterns of student behavior that will give additional insight into the different goals and therefore different measures we should have in evaluating whether MOOCs are effective.