14.73x The Challenges of Global Poverty MITx on edX Course Report - 2013 Spring

Abstract

This report describes 14.73x: The Challenges of Global Poverty, one of the first 11 courses offered by MITx on edX, a platform for delivering massive open online courses (MOOCs). Offered in the Spring of 2013, 14.73x offers students a course for those who are interested in the challenge posed by massive and persistent world poverty, and are hopeful that economists might have something useful to say about this challenge. The report describes the course structure, in terms of the number of basic e-text, auto-graded problems, and video components. Following a methodology established for analysis of the first 17 HarvardX and MITx courses (Ho et al, HarvardX and MITx: The first year of open online courses), course registrants are described in terms of viewed, explored, and certified sub-populations, together with demographics. The diversity of student activity in the course, and the persistence of student interactions with the courseware, are addressed. The report concludes with descriptions of special features in 14.73x.

Keywords: MOOC, Massive Open Online Course, MITx, HarvardX, edX, online learning, distance learning, higher education