The Maturing of MOOCs

This story originally appeared in The Harvard Gazette.

Through networks such as edX, the education platform co-founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), MOOCs (massive open online courses) are now mainstream, and a lot of learning has gone digital.

Whether directly (purely online) or in a hybrid fashion (a residential course that uses a learning-management system to do basic administrative work or more sophisticated tasks such as assessments or discussion boards), faculty and learners are working in a new kind of classroom.

But the field is young, and the next-gen classroom often doubles as a laboratory. With millions of global learners and teachers taking advantage of a vast array of free or low-cost online courses, researchers are studying the resulting information trail, from mouse clicks to discussion posts, to understand what, how, and even whether students are learning...

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