Sloan C Friday Keynote: Anant Agarwal from edX
https://www.edx.org
a $60 million investment from MIT and Harvard
Compared to large classrooms/lecture halls, students often prefer virtual contact with instructors
-Feels more personalized, learning in a way that is customized to their needs
On campus education hasn’t changed in centuries- lecture, podiums, neat rows
-30% of students routinely sleep in class
Move to blended learning and small, interactive groups
edX History
They were hoping for 2000 students. 10,000 signed up in first few hours.
Eventually 155,000 students enrolled in the first course- Circuits and Electronics
26,349 tried first problem set
10,547 made it to midterm
9318 passed the midterm
8240 took the final exam
7157 Certified
Compares the concept of the retention rate in MOOCs to the acceptance rate of schools like MIT.
United Nations has # of countries in the world as 214, and they have students from more than 217 countries.
30% of students from US
13% from India
edX is a non-profit
offers open edX code
China platform XuetangX (schoolX)
France Universite Numerique
Arab region platform Erdaak by QRF
MOOCs contribute to improving campus learning e.g. San Jose State University where course retake rates droped from 41%to 9%
Anatomy of an edX Online Class-
*Active Learning
-students go to bed dreaming of green check marks
-gamification virtual labs
-Harvard course- Science of Cooking
*Peer Learning
*Credentialing
– XSeries Certificates, sequences of courses
How long should videos be?
How does student engagement relate to video lengths?
Philip Guo
863 videos, 5,265,833 watching sessions
Compared certificate earners to all other students
Certificate earner results:
Maximum engagement– 6-9 minutes long
40 minute video- median watch time 2 minutes
Hours spent on Homework in relation to total points in a course– more hours spent more total points in the course
