HarvardX and MITx: The First Year of Open Online Courses, Fall 2012-Summer 2013

TLDR

HarvardX and MITx are collaborative initiatives between Harvard University and MIT aimed at enhancing campus education, advancing educational research, and expanding global access to online learning. This report jointly presents registrant and course data from edX to contextualize the varied goals and efforts of HarvardX and MITx instructor teams. Between fall 2012 and summer 2013, the two institutions launched 17 MOOCs on the jointly founded edX platform. During that first year, 841,687 registrations from 597,692 unique users were logged, with 43,196 earning certificates, 35,937 engaging with at least half the content, 469,702 viewing less than half, and 292,852 never engaging.

Abstract

HarvardX and MITx are collaborative institutional efforts between Harvard University and MIT to enhance campus-based education, advance educational research, and increase access to online learning opportunities worldwide. Over the year from the fall of 2012 to the summer of 2013, HarvardX and MITx launched 17 courses on edX, a jointly founded platform for delivering massive open online courses (MOOCs). In that year, 43,196 registrants earned certificates of completion. Another 35,937 registrants explored half or more of course content without certification. An additional 469,702 registrants viewed less than half of the content. And 292,852 registrants never engaged with the online content. In total, there were 841,687 registrations from 597,692 unique users across the first year of HarvardX and MITx courses. This report is a joint effort by institutional units at Harvard and MIT to describe the registrant and course data provided by edX in the context of the diverse efforts and intentions of HarvardX and MITx instructor teams.