IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aecrev/v104y2014i5p514-18.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

(Dis)organization and Success in an Economics MOOC

Author

Listed:
  • Abhijit V. Banerjee
  • Esther Duflo

Abstract

Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) present the potential to deliver high quality education to a large number of students. But they suffer from low completion rates. This paper identifies disorganization as a factor behind failure to complete a MOOC. Students who enroll one day late are 17 percentage points less likely to earn a certificate than students who enroll exactly on time. This reflects selection, but it does seem to be related to demographic characteristics, motivation to complete the course, or ability. This suggests that building in even more structure in the MOOC could be a factor in improving performance.

Suggested Citation

  • Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo, 2014. "(Dis)organization and Success in an Economics MOOC," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(5), pages 514-518, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:104:y:2014:i:5:p:514-18
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.104.5.514
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/aer.104.5.514
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/aer/ds/10405/P2014_1144_ds.zip
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Pugatch, Todd & Wilson, Nicholas, 2018. "Nudging study habits: A field experiment on peer tutoring in higher education," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 151-161.
    2. Daniel Schunk & Eva M. Berger & Henning Hermes & Kirsten Winkel & Ernst Fehr, 2022. "Teaching self-regulation," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 6(12), pages 1680-1690, December.
      • Daniel Schunk & Eva M. Berger & Henning Hermes & Kirsten Winkel & Ernst Fehr, 2022. "Teaching Self-Regulation," Working Papers 2210, Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
    3. Wada, Shuhei, 2021. "Online education and the Great Convergence," MPRA Paper 108793, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Hardt, David & Nagler, Markus & Rincke, Johannes, 2023. "Tutoring in (online) higher education: Experimental evidence," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    5. Mohssen Hakami, 2019. "The Impact of Integrating a MOOC Platform on the Teaching of Computer Science Course: A Case Study," Journal of Educational Issues, Macrothink Institute, vol. 5(1), pages 4453-4453, December.
    6. McKenzie, David & Sansone, Dario, 2019. "Predicting entrepreneurial success is hard: Evidence from a business plan competition in Nigeria," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    7. Joshua Goodman & Julia Melkers & Amanda Pallais, 2019. "Can Online Delivery Increase Access to Education?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 37(1), pages 1-34.
    8. Hardt, David & Nagler, Markus & Rincke, Johannes, 2022. "Can peer mentoring improve online teaching effectiveness? An RCT during the COVID-19 pandemic," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    9. Riudavets-Barcons, Marc & Uusitalo, Roope, 2023. "School Closures and Student Achievement: Evidence from a High Stakes Exam," IZA Discussion Papers 16074, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Patterson, Richard W., 2018. "Can behavioral tools improve online student outcomes? Experimental evidence from a massive open online course," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 153(C), pages 293-321.
    11. McKenzie, David & Sansone, Dario, 2017. "Man vs. Machine in Predicting Successful Entrepreneurs: Evidence from a Business Plan Competition in Nigeria," CEPR Discussion Papers 12523, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    12. Guerrero, Maribel & Heaton, Sohvi & Urbano, David, 2021. "Building universities’ intrapreneurial capabilities in the digital era: The role and impacts of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    13. Perri, Timothy, 2016. "Online education, signaling, and human capital," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 69-74.
    14. Ni Huang & Jiayin Zhang & Gordon Burtch & Xitong Li & Peiyu Chen, 2021. "Combating Procrastination on Massive Online Open Courses via Optimal Calls to Action," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 32(2), pages 301-317, June.
    15. Tong, Tingting & Li, Haizheng, 2018. "Demand for MOOC - An Application of Big Data," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 194-207.
    16. Novella, Rafael & Rosas-Shady, David & Freund, Richard, 2024. "Is online job training for all? Experimental evidence on the effects of a Coursera program in Costa Rica," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    17. Gong, Jie & Liu, Tracy Xiao & Tang, Jie, 2021. "How monetary incentives improve outcomes in MOOCs: Evidence from a field experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 190(C), pages 905-921.
    18. Hoque, Nazmul & Basher, Syed Abul & A.K. Enamul, Haque, 2022. "Do Students Perform Better in Online Delivery of Education? Evidence from Bangladesh," MPRA Paper 112981, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Sam Allgood & William B. Walstad & John J. Siegfried, 2015. "Research on Teaching Economics to Undergraduates," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 53(2), pages 285-325, June.
    20. Emilie Dargaud & Fréedéeric Jouneau-Sion, 2020. "The good MOOC and the universities," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(5), pages 474-490, September.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I23 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Higher Education; Research Institutions

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:104:y:2014:i:5:p:514-18. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.