MOOCs: What Harvard and MIT Data Reveal

If you know much about higher education, you know that Massive Open Online Courses (known as MOOCs) are all the rage. These courses are open to anyone, anywhere, for free, and promise opportunity for students who wish to learn on their own. They are exciting in concept, and threaten to turn higher education on its head.

So the recent release of HarvardX and MITX data on MOOCs is exciting. The data is scrubbed to protect the privacy of the students who took the courses, but still yields a wealth of interesting stuff. But you must interact.

This dashboard starts with the intro, but has five views you can see by clicking across the tabs at the top. Once on a view, you can limit the data shown by (depending on the dashboard), by gender, education levels of students, home country, or institution, and whether the student registered or completed the course for a grade. Data are shown by course, age, home country, and institution.

Have fun, and let me know what jumps out at you.

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