A failed experiment at nonprofit massive open online course (MOOC) platform edX has cast a pall over one possible future for the online learning platforms.
MOOC provider Udacity announced in November that it would turn its focus away from traditional colleges and universities and toward more vocational training. This “pivot” led many to speculate that the future of MOOCs could be career — rather than higher education — oriented.
Now, an unsuccessful job-placement pilot program quietly tested by edX about a year ago puts that prediction into question as well.
The experiment, according to a slide presentation shown privately to members of edX’s consortium but obtained by the Chronicle of Higher Education, attempted to pair 868 high-performing MOOC students with technology companies including Google and Amazon.
Only three students managed to obtain a job interview at the end of the experiment. Not one student was hired.
While a spokeswoman for edX said no one was available for comment, the Chronicle quoted one slide offering a possible explanation.
“Existing HR departments want to go for traditional degree programs and filter out nontraditional candidates,” the slide read.
As a nonprofit quickly expanding into high school and international markets, edX may be less concerned about the experiment’s failure, but for MOOC platforms, like Coursera and Udacity, that are increasingly basing their business models on the sale of completion certificates, a lack of acceptance from HR departments could be a problem.
Michelle Rhee-Weise, senior research fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Technology, said MOOC companies are starting to realize the challenge in taking on massive higher education institutions.
Instead, they are looking toward utilizing MOOCs as a career-building bridge.
“From our research, we know it doesn’t make sense for an upstart company to compete head on with a traditional institution,” Rhee-Weise said. “It’s just not going to work. It makes much more sense to go around that institution.”
But if the prevalent preference among HR departments is a recruit with a traditional degree, then MOOC platforms are still battling universities for attention, just in a different arena.
Michael Horn, also of the Clayton Christensen Institute, told eCampus News earlier this year that the success of Coursera’s Signature Track courses demonstrates that there is potential to going around the traditional college credit.
The question, he said, is whether employers will grow to respect MOOC certificates in a way that’s comparable to a college course or degree. Rhee-Weise said she can still see that happening, though the MOOC companies will have to do more than send resumes to specific companies.
Much of recruiting, she said, is currently managed through computerized searches that look for certain keywords — keywords still tied to traditional degrees and “name-brand” schools.
Many of those searches don’t yet include markers that reflect alternative learning paths like MOOCs.
“Over time, however, we may see that programs, and I don’t just mean MOOCs, that partner directly with employers and companies to design specific learning pathways for their existing workforce will become validated and trusted by employers,” Rhee-Wiese said. “Many competency-based programs are already doing this, creating distribution channels of students through companies looking to skill up their workforce.”
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