Students who registered for massive open online courses at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology through the edX platform showed steep falloffs in enrollment from their first year to the next. Persistence for new cohorts of students has gotten worse over time. Nearly 38 percent of registrants for MOOCs at MITx or Harvardx in 2012-13 were enrolled in at least one MOOC at MITx or Harvardx the following year. For those who registered for the first time in 2016-17, only 10 percent were enrolled in a MOOC at MITx or Harvardx the following year. In another sign of enrollment decline, the number of initial registrants for MOOCs in either of the two university programs fell by more than half from 2015-16 to 2016-17.
| | 2012-13 cohort | 2013-14 cohort | 2014-15 cohort | 2015-16 cohort | 2016-17 cohort | 2017-18 cohort |
| | Unique learners | Retention rate | Unique learners | Retention rate | Unique learners | Retention rate | Unique learners | Retention rate | Unique learners | Retention rate | Unique learners | Retention rate |
| Year 1 | 192,255 | 100.0% | 755,800 | 100.0% | 630,992 | 100.0% | 1,108,858 | 100.0% | 531,213 | 100.0% | 499,736 | 100.0% |
| Year 2 | 72,093 | 37.5% | 205,814 | 27.2% | 145,499 | 23.1% | 129,562 | 11.7% | 53,030 | 10.0% | | |
| Year 3 | 46,494 | 24.2% | 146,713 | 19.4% | 60,971 | 9.7% | 92,977 | 8.4% | | | | |
| Year 4 | 36,089 | 18.8% | 76,780 | 10.2% | 38,530 | 6.1% | | | | | | |
| Year 5 | 21,690 | 11.3% | 51,996 | 6.9% | | | | | | | | |
| Year 6 | 15,059 | 7.8% | | | | | | | | | | |
Note: Data are drawn from 565 course iterations from 261 different massive open online courses offered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University through the edX platform. Enrollment figures in subsequent years show how many registrants in the initial cohort were enrolled in at least one MOOC course through MITx or Harvardx in each of the following years. The percentages of students retained from the initial cohort are shown in parentheses. The paper discussing the data can be found here. Questions or comments on the Almanac should be sent to Ruth Hammond.
Source: Justin Reich and José A. Ruipérez Valiente, “The MOOC Pivot,” Science, Vol. 363, Issue 6423 (11 January 2019)
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