I report on survey responses from 1,207 of the 25,589 students who enrolled in a Massive Online Open Class (MOOC) titled “Computational Investing, Part I” via coursera.org in Spring 2013. The responses represent 56% of the students who completed the course and 2.5% of those who initially enrolled but did not complete it.
Related articles
- A review of this course
- What students said about my MOOC (Spring 2013)
- About MOOC completion rates
- Teaching a MOOC: Lesssons learned
Executive summary
Here are a few of the most relevant and interesting bits of data:
Enrollment and completion:
- 25,589 enrolled (clicked “sign me up”).
- 15,688 (61%) watched a video
- 6,855 (27%) took a quiz.
- 1,165 completed the course, which is:
- 4.5% of those who enrolled.
- 7.4% of those who watched a video.
- 17% of those who took a quiz.
Of those who completed the course:
- 36% live in the US.
- 53% are white.
- 89% are male.
- 9% hold Ph.D.s.
And now, for a more detailed examination.
Background
This data concerns students who enrolled in the second offering of Computational Investing, Part I in Spring 2013. The MOOC was taught by Tucker Balch of Georgia Tech and delivered via coursera.org. The statistics here are self reported by the students.
The data is for this particular course only, so it does not represent statistics for MOOCs overall.
The demographics of students in the course are likely affected by affected by the course topic, which is typically taught at the graduate level.
Demographics: Country of Residence
Chart 1: Country of residence of students who completed the course. There were students from over 100 countries participating in the course. This chart reports the percentage of the top 15 participating countries of the students who completed the course.
Countries of students who completed the course.
Chart 2: Country of residence of students who did not complete the course. This chart reports the percentage of the top 15 participating countries of the students who did not complete the course.
Countries of students who did not complete the course.
Demographics: Participation by residents of non-OECD countries
Membership in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is considered by some as a measure of economic development. Here we provide statistics regarding those students from OECD and non-OECD states:
- 26.7% of the students who completed the course live in non-OECD countries (73.3% OECD)
- 40.7% of the students who did not complete the course live in non-OECD countries (59.3% OECD).
(note: OECD data is from the Fall 2012 session.)
Demographics: Age
For students who completed the course:
- minimum: 17 years old
- mean: 35 years old
- maximum: 74 years old
For students who did not complete the course:
- minimum: 16 years old
- mean: 34 years old
- maximum: 88 years old
Chart 3: Age distribution of students in the course. This chart reports the percentage of students in 5 year age “bins”.
(note: age data is from the Fall 2012 session).
Demographics: Sex
For students who completed the course:
- male: 94%
- female: 6%
- prefer not to say: 1%
For students who did not complete the course:
- male: 89%
- female: 9%
- prefer not to say: 2%
Demographics: Race
For students who completed the course:
- white: 65%
- black or african american: 1%
- asian: 27%
- native hawaiian or other pacific islander: 0%
- american indian or alaska native: 0.3%
- other: 6%
- prefer not to say: 3%
For students who did not complete the course:
- white: 53%
- black or african american: 4%
- asian: 29%
- native hawaiian or other pacific islander: 0.2%
- american indian or alaska native: 0.5%
- other: 8%
- prefer not to say: 6.8%
Demographics: Highest level of education attained
Chart 4: Highest level of education attained by students who completed the course. These statistics were self reported by the students.
Education of students who completed the course.
Chart 5: Highest level of education attained by students who did not complete the course. These statistics were self reported by the students.
Education level of students who did not complete the course.
Participation in online forums
Of students who completed the course:
- 92% read the forums
- 40% posted in the forums
Of students who did not complete the course:
- 66% read the forums
- 21% posted in the forums
Satisfaction with the course by students who completed the course
Students who completed the course were asked “How much do you agree with each of these statements regarding your learning in the course? (Please rate on a scale of Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree).” We report the percentage of students who selected Agree or Strongly Agree below improvement from last session in green:
- Considering everything, the instructor was an effective teacher: 87.9% up 26.8%
- For the amount of time I invested in this course, I’m happy with what I learned: 90.4% up 22.9%
- The course materials were presented in an engaging manner: 83.1% up 26.1%
- I would like to take a more advanced course on this topic: 94.5% up 2.3%
- I found the course personally fulfilling: 85.5% up 26.5%
- I learned what I was hoping to learn in this course: 76.4% up 33.6%
Satisfaction with the course by students who did not complete the course
- Did you find the course useful even though you didn’t complete it? Yes: 93.4% up 3.7%
Completion rates
- 25,589 enrolled (clicked “sign me up”).
- 15,688 (61%) watched a video
- 6,855 (27%) took a quiz.
- 1,165 completed the course, which is:
- 4.5% of those who enrolled.
- 7.4% of those who watched a video.
- 17% of those whotook a quiz.
Acknowledgements
Fatima Wirth, Ph.D. assisted with instructional design, and the course was TA-ed by Sourabh Bajaj.
John
January 27, 2013
Thanks for sharing… very interesting results.
Alnairiar
January 28, 2013
Very interesting.
Spain with a 55% of unemployed for youths (under 25) has a very good rate of completers.
For the next time could be interesting the efect of the native language in the results.
mgozaydinMuvaffak GOZAYDIN
January 29, 2013
Sorry it is not 55 % , it is only 5.5 %
Total com*pleters is only 12 %
Alnair
January 29, 2013
No, unemployement rate for under 25 in Spain is 55%! (Sorry, I need to improve my english)
Of the total completers 5.5% are spaniards, but of the total non-completers only 3.3% are spaniards. This is an indication of over the median completation rate.
mgozaydinMuvaffak GOZAYDIN
January 29, 2013
Vowww
Unemployement rate is 55 %
How do you live ?
My motto for unemployement is always PRODUCTION to produce something you can sell . So always investigate what is needed in the world , find out, produce and sell .
Very simple I know . Let God help you too .
Ellen Zegura
January 28, 2013
That’s a pretty strange definition of undeveloped, not to mention that terminology is considered offensive by some. Under-developed or developing is more standard, though possibly not all that much less offensive.
Tucker Balch
January 28, 2013
Thanks for the feedback Ellen. I have removed mention of developed (or not) and simply refer to countries as OECD members or non-OECD members.
Alnair
January 28, 2013
Words meaning depends on their use. If you simply change undeveloped for under-developed, sooner or later someone will find the later offensive, and you will need to change the word again, and again and again.
So, one must remark undevelopment is an “state” for a country, not is part of his nature and it can be changed, as have done many other countries before.
Just look at may country, Spain was an undeveloped country 50-60 years ago and now is considered developed, in spite of everything. So I don’t think it was a shame be undeveloped but a challenge.
Joao
January 29, 2013
Perhaps you should ask in the survey whether the person plans to finish/learn/use the material after the course, by himself.
mgozaydinMuvaffak GOZAYDIN
January 29, 2013
Excellent study. Thanks billiıon Tucker .
We need more of these.
I am surprised to see 35 % or so USA completers.
In the past in some MIT courses USA were 15 % .
But any way .
This shows us that MOOCs must start charging a small fee in order to get rid of curious people .
But unfortunately marketing companies are using this initial number as a success number .
That is the reason I do not like for profit education companies . They just mislead people
If this course was charged $ 10 I would assume it would get 5,000 enrıollments.
Then income is 5,000 x $ 10 = $ 50,000 still not bad .
If they had given credit and degrees enrollment would be 10,000 at $ 10 and income
10,000 x $ 10 = $ 100,000 an excellent income .
If fee was $ 50 then enrollment would be 2,000 and income is
2,000 x $ 50 = $ 100,000 still a very good number .
Today online for profit schools with a degree charge $ 1,500 per person enrollment is 100
then income is 100 x $ 1,500 = $ 150,000 so you see how they make money
Please start charging something so that
we can give bettter service to serious students,
we do not waste our time to curious people
Lee
February 15, 2013
The “curious people”, as you put it, do not impede on the interest of the “serious student” so that is not a good reason to charge a fee. It would, however, prevent many people from taking the course for financial reasons, which is counter the objectives of the founders of cousera.org as expressed by Daphne Koller in her Ted talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/daphne_koller_what_we_re_learning_from_online_education.html
Rao
February 20, 2013
Well said, Lee. If the intent is to make money, I believe there are many ways smart and good colleges / Univs can go about. Coursera, on the other hand was started with a different objectives.
SDC
May 28, 2013
I don’t know that $5 deters too many people for ‘financial reasons’. Come on now. If people pay for something (even a bit) it says they have some level of commitment. If anything it should help their motivation. And people who don’t think education is worth $5 – well, they’re a lost cause to begin with. When we talk about ‘financial reasons’, we mainly think about students not having to get saddled with oppressive debt to take classes.
mgozaydinMuvaffak GOZAYDIN
January 29, 2013
This shows also we need to be global in order to attract many students .
65 % foreigners is quite big number .
Never forget the success of the online depends on number of enrollment with pay , even a small one is ok .
Therefore online must be made by the best schools of the world .
And only 20-30 best schools of the world is enough to educate whole world online .
MIT Harvard Berkeley can do that .
Ellen Zegura
January 29, 2013
Curious: what can you say, if anything, about the statistical relevance of the data from non-completers, given the low rate of response?
mgozaydinMuvaffak GOZAYDIN
January 29, 2013
Ellen
Non completers do not have any interest but curiosity .
I do not expect any response from them . Personelly I never did .
Tucker Balch
January 29, 2013
I don’t think we can say much about that. I would suspect that the sample is biased towards folks who have a positive interest in the material or course.
risoto2000
January 31, 2013
Here are more statistics about MOOCS in spanish (mobile devices, social networks, etc):
http://revistaeducacionvirtual.com/perfil-de-creadores-de-moocs-en-iberoamerica-redes-sociales-usadas-paises-dispositivos-moviles/
anonymous
February 6, 2013
You should definitely ask in the future about average number of hours spend each week on the course or similar question. What annoys me very much is extreme underestimating workload by teaching stuff on some of the courses’ info page ! Everyone complains about that and easy way to fix that is to adjust workload expectancy of future courses based on survey from those who completed :)
mgozaydin
February 7, 2013
Asking is also free.
So askc whatever you you want to ask . Please be serious .
C. Lloyd McKenzie
May 27, 2013
I learned of this course via Tastytrade, where Tucker Balch and Tom Sosnoff face off in the “Man versus Machine.” Course seems fascinating and piqued my interest. Will definitely spend some time checking it out.
mgozaydin
May 27, 2013
We need more of these surveys
Maud
July 21, 2013
I’m amazed at the high percentage of students that already hold academic degrees, especially since Coursera classes are generally not postgrad level. Maybe they all realized that their degrees didn’t make them rich, so now they put their hopes in “Computational Investing”? But how can someone hold a PhD in anything and not be able to complete this course? I suspect most people who sign up for a free MOOC are just curious and either don’t even intend to complete it, or lose interest, or realize they don’t have enough time. I’ve signed up for about 30 MOOCs and completed 5, and some of these only in the second or third round because my university studies don’t leave much extra time.
Tucker Balch
July 21, 2013
Completing a MOOC is often more about having the time than having the intellectual capacity.
Muvaffak Gozaydin
July 22, 2013
That is called life long education,
From cradle to grave
I have 3 MS in engineering from Stanford and 80 years old .
I still learn new things. Just imagine MOOCs .
Tucker Balch
November 20, 2013
Low completion rates for MOOCs are a red herring. Comparing MOOCs to on campus courses is not an apples to apples comparison. The students in each case have significantly differing investments in the course.