June 8th marked the end of the MITx free pilot course, Circuits and Electronics, which welcomed more registrants than all of MIT’s living alumni (122,000 as of January 2012). MITx will probably survey its pilot course participants on its own, but in the meantime, I tracked down one person who actually made it through to the end and passed – and decided to conduct an anonymous ‘focus group of one.’ So after all the hype, what can we learn? If this ‘focus group of one’ is any indication of the broader group of people who successfully make it to the end of MITx-like courses (and that’s only a guess at this point), what does this mean for their appeal and place in the higher ed landscape?
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/stratedgy/mitx-focus-group-one
