Curriculum·G701 How to Teach This Material·about 33 min
The Academy's methods, and why each one exists
By the end of this lesson you can
- →State the measured completion rate of the largest open online courses and what it did over six years, with the source
- →Name each of the Academy's design principles and standing rules, and the failure each one was written against
- →Compute what a 3.13 percent completion rate means for a cohort, and what a course that gates nothing gains and loses by it
- →Teach any lesson in this Academy from its own structure: autopsy, objectives, worked example, misconception, cards, items, and say what each part is for
Graduate · enrolled learners
This lesson opens with The MOOC pivot, Science, 11 January 2019.
- What happened
- Justin Reich and José Ruipérez-Valiente analyzed every course taught on edX by MIT and Harvard from 2012 to 2018. Among all participants, 3.13 percent completed their course in 2017 to 2018, down from about 4 percent in each of the two previous years and nearly 6 percent in 2014 to 2015. The great majority of learners never returned after their first year. Growth in participation had concentrated almost entirely in the world's most affluent countries. The low completion rate had not improved over six years, and the authors' conclusion was that the providers had pivoted away from the open, free model toward paid credentials and corporate training.
- The decision point
- The promise had been that free, open, high-quality courses from the best universities would educate the world. The courses were free, open and high quality, and 97 of every 100 people who started one did not finish, in the last year measured as in the first. Quality of content was not the constraint. The constraint was that nothing in the design held a learner to the work: no cohort, no practical, no standard, no person who would notice an absence. This Academy's lessons are free and open too, and it faces the same number. What it does about it, the gates, the cards, the assessors, the placement diagnostic, is the answer this lesson lays out, and a teacher who understands the 3.13 percent understands why none of those parts is optional.
What you will be able to answer
- →What was the MOOC completion rate, and what did it do over six years?
- →What holds a learner to the work, per this Academy's design?
- →What are the parts of a lesson, and what is each for?
- →What are the six design principles referenced by id?
Orientation and Year One are open: anyone can read them without an account. From Year Two onward the lessons are for enrolled learners, because progress through the later years only means anything if it is tracked against a record.
It is free. We do not sell the list and there is nothing to buy at the end of it.
Sources and review
- https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aav7958
- https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019/01/16/study-offers-data-show-moocs-didnt-achieve-their-goals
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30630920/
Confidence high·Volatility low·Reviewed 2026-09-14·Owner unassigned
Contested
Completion is not the only outcome a free open course produces; many participants sample deliberately and leave satisfied. The lesson uses the rate as a measure of what a design without a cohort, a practical or an assessor holds a learner to, not as a verdict on the participants.
This Academy has not yet published its own completion figures, because the enrolled years are new. When it does, they belong in this lesson, whatever they are, per P6.