HOW TO MAKE MOOCS BETTER? I SUGGEST 3Ms

Edit: And we launched our meaningful motivational online course at loop.manipalglobal.com. We are yet to do the "movies" part of it. #microprocessors #loop   

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MOOCs are hot and I am a believer. However, MOOCs have to get better if they have to transform learning. Here are three things titled Meaningful, Movies and Motivation that MOOCs can do to improve learning outcomes. This is basis my experience delivering online education to 200,000 working adult learners each year who pay for their courses.  

Meaningful, Before Massive: 

Product creators usually design for quality first and then trade-off quality to achieve scale. The mark of a great product is how much quality it retains after factoring for scale. Example: Google Search. In the case of today's MOOCs, the trade-off leans heavily towards scale with a lot quality being lost. Example: Peer-grading. Developing a system that can achieve reasonable quality grading at scale is one of the big challenges that MOOCs face. But to choose to peer-grade instead of solving the grading problem through innovation is a large quality compromise. It is the equivalent of Google saying "I cannot search a million websites to find your answer. So we suggest you mail a few of your friends and ask them instead. Our research says the recommendation of ten friends is as good as searching a million websites". I think this is happening because MOOCs, as the massive in their name suggests, are designing for scale first rather than quality first. They can be much better designed if they focus on quality first and then factor for scale. But the trade-off should include innovating to retain as much quality as possible. 

Movies, Not Videos:

MOOCs have created and popularized videos. But they are yet to create movies. MOOCs can become magical if they adopt movie making techniques and make learning movies rather than learning videos. Instead of today's one actor, one camera, one location model which makes watching them tedious MOOCs can use multiple cameras, dramatic shots and multi-actor scenes. It will be more expensive to do this. But owing to the scale MOOCs achieve, it will be possible to make it affordable. Further, MOOCs should learn from the gaming industry. Where are the badges, points, progress bars, levels, leader boards, multi-learner competitions? This will help hugely in increasing learner motivation at a tactical level.  (edit: just discovered an example of this : the Virgin America video on flight safety https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtyfiPIHsIg 

Motivation: 

There are two problems in higher education - access and motivation. MOOCs solve the access problem very well. But they do nothing for motivation. For most learners, education is like commuting; painful but has to be put up with so you can get to work. But for people at Ivy League institutions (they run all the MOOCs today) education is cool, a status symbol. This creates MOOC design that is not appropriate for the millions of non-Ivy League learners it is intended for. How to solve this? Bring in employers into the MOOCs. Let employers drive course creation and pedagogy. Make employers commit to hiring high performers on MOOCs. This shift in approach will address the motivation problem. With committed employers, the massive armies of MOOC learners know that the pain of studying is offset by the pay off of a stable job. I am certain this will address the completion rate challenge of MOOCs.