Evaluating Effectiveness of Moocs Using Empirical Tools: Learners Perspective

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are found to be the latest disruption in online education. Since 2012 up to day, there are many MOOCs introduced in many platforms. Some of the platforms are namely Coursera, edX, NovoEd, FutureLearn, Open2Study. For an instance Coursera has more than 700 courses in their platform. Although there is increase demand for online courses, very less percentage of participants complete the courses. Some researchers claim this is due to lack of self discipline, yet it is still sceptic on the reasons for higher dropout rates. However, examining reviews of the courses by participants and experiencing by ourselves as active MOOC participants it is understood that not all the courses meet the user goals or effective to the users. In this empirical research we tried to evaluate the effectiveness of MOOCs. We enrolled in 22 courses from 5 different platforms and evaluated the courses while actively participating. We used 2 evaluation frameworks based on empirical research in this process. Evaluation results indicated a quality variation in the platforms and in between courses within the same platform as well. Our conclusion strongly emphasize the requirement of quality control in designing and implementing of any MOOC course as many courses lacks to meet the user goals proving a quality learning experience.