MOOC as semester-long entrance exam

Abstract

MOOCs (massive open online courses) became a hugely popular topic in both academic and non-academic discussions in 2012. Many of the offered MOOCs are somewhat "watered-down versions" of the actual courses given by the MOOC professors at their home universities. At the University of Helsinki, Department of Computer Science, our MOOC on introductory programming is exactly the same course as our first programming course on campus. Our MOOC uses the Extreme Apprenticeship (XA) model for programming education, thus ensuring that students are proceeding step-by-step in the desired direction. As an additional twist, we have used our MOOC as an entrance exam to studies in University of Helsinki. In this paper, we compare the student achievement after one year of studies between two cohorts: the MOOC intake (n=38) and the intake that started their studies during the fall (n=68). The results indicate that student achievement is at least as good on the MOOC intake when compared to the normal intake. An additional benefit is that the students admitted via MOOC are less likely to drop out from their studies during their first year.