MOOCs — Why we got them wrong (At least why I think we got them wrong)
MOOCs were meant to save us. Well, at least that’s what we thought. In reality, it is only a small piece of a puzzle, however somehow the MOOC industry still doesn’t get it. It’s failure to understand this is has led to low completion rates and declining sign ups.
It will probably go down in tech history as ‘one of those technologies that was too early, wrong timing or/and poorly executed, but the general idea was correct 20–30 years later’.
Anyways.
Average completion rates for MOOCs are 8–10%. Why is this a problem? Well, we thought MOOCs were going to save us from our outdated education system. If we are being technical, MOOCs should be the foundation for decentralising quality education. So why is it so low?
*Drum roll please*
We overestimated ourselves firstly, that’s why. There is way too much reliance on self motivation. People complete degrees not because of personal satisfaction or even to learn, but the external recognition and verification of skill set a degree gets them, especially from top tier universities. Our current MOOC model only works when the end goal presents itself as a ‘strong enough’ end goal, i.e what external signal will it give off? Will it have the prestige of saying I attended Harvard?. MOOCs just don’t provide that.
Currently (most) employers still do not value MOOC qualifications highly and rightly so. This is due to the inability to 1. Verify who completed the course 2. Verify the skills gained. 3.Quantify level of skills gained. 4. Show selectivity. The fourth reason is arguably the most important, as it acts as an intellect filter for most employers, and people in general — the basis of ‘signalling theory’. MOOCs (fortunately or unfortunately) do not provide that ‘selectivity’ signal, which is unfortunately the basis of our education system. In other words we found a new piece, but tried to place it in an old puzzle.
So what does mean? Do we try and bring signalling theory to MOOCs? Make students do online exams? I hope not. What has been made clear however, is that the unturned stone in all of this mess is…... credentialing, but that is a whole other topic that I will write about another day.
That said, MOOCs are part of the ‘upskilling’ solution, a necessary ingredient in finding an end to end solution for the future of work. Ultimately, education has the interesting challenge of first having to fix its infrastructure and culture, before building (tech) solutions on top of it. Or maybe we can do both at the same time? I am still not sure. What I do know is that without first addressing the infrastructure, solutions will continue to fail or worse, further amplify our broken system.
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As usual..
I am really open to having different conversations, and am actively seeking opinions from students/ ex students and teachers.Feel free to drop me a DM on twitter @adaobiadibe_ or an email adaobiadibe23@gmail.com (but I prefer the former)
