By Steve Kolowich, Chronicle of Higher Ed
Most students who register for a MOOC have no intention of completing the course, said the company’s co-founders, Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng. “Their intent is to explore, find out something about the content, and move on to something else,” said Ms. Koller. The rates of completion for students who have given some indication that they plan to do the work is substantially higher. For example, for students who so much as submit the first assignment, the completion rate leaps to 45 percent. For students who are paying $50 for the company’s new Signature Track program—which includes features designed as safeguards against identity fraud and cheating on examinations—the pass rates are even higher, at about 70 percent, Ms. Koller said. That is even higher, she said, than the non-Signature Track students who profess in surveys to high levels of commitment to completing the course. This “suggests that having skin in the game is highly valuable,” Ms. Koller said.
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