Now that the Inquiry MOOC is completed, data analysis, interpretation and reflection can begin. Jeffrey Pomerantz from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill offered a Coursera MOOC entitled Metadata: Organizing and Discovering Information in 2013 and recently summarized findings derived from analyzing course data here. My data analysis of the Inquiry MOOC draws heavily on his suggestions.
Initially, 197 participants enrolled in the course. When the course began after the two week enrollment period, 84 participants logged into the first week, but only 62 submitted the Discussion Rubric for Week 1. Using the number of Total Registrations as the denominator for determining completion rate would yield a 16% success rate for the Inquiry MOOC. But Pomerantz suggests that using the Total Registrations is unrealistic. In our case, 103 of those registered didn’t even show up the first week of the MOOC, so including them in any analysis is flawed. Another category that could be used are what Pomerantz calls Active Students, those who login and view at least one video. In the case of the Inquiry MOOC, we didn’t feel that viewing one short podcast was enough to consider someone an Active Student, so we used the criteria of those participants who engaged in one, two and three or more discussion and referred to them as Serious Enrollees. The completion rate for those who completed at least one weekly discussion was 46%; two weeks or more, 54%; and three or more weeks, 67%. There were 7 participants who completed the course at the GOLD level, completing all assignments and submitting a portfolio of their work for a grade. Of those, 4 A’s, 1 A- and 2 B’s were earned. The quality of the assignments in the portfolio matched students in the sister MSSE 501 course in the MSSE program. The depth of learning, quality and rigor of the projects, and professional reflection was equal to that of the MSSE students. The result was that 12% of the Serious Enrollees earned a Gold Level Certificate and 88% earned a Blue level certificate. Using the Serious Enrollee category of three or more weeks of discussion participation yields a healthy 67% completion rate, a number more in line with Pomerantz’s data.
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