HarvardX and MITx: Four Years of Open Online Courses -- Fall 2012-Summer 2016

Abstract

In 2014 and 2015, a joint research team from Harvard University and MIT released summary reports describing the first two years of Harvard and MIT open online courses launched on the nonprofit learning platform, edX. These reports set expectations for the demographics and behavior of course participants and established an analytic framework for understanding the then-nascent online learning context known as the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC).

This “Year 4 Report” extends these earlier findings to four complete years of HarvardX and MITx courses on edX, resulting in one of the largest surveys of MOOCs to date: 290 courses, 245 thousand certificates, 4.5 million participants, 28 million participant-hours, and 2.3 billion events logged online. We present our findings in a series of nine exhibits that address questions about the evolution of the MOOC movement from its birth in 2012, through its current adolescence.

Keywords: MOOC, massive open online course, HarvardX, MITx, edX, online learning, distance education, higher education, residential learning