- Third, we asked participants to grade each other for the main homework, which was also based on a real case of a startup having some issues that they had to discuss. We were initially apprehensive about this grading approach, but eventually it worked well: very few were left without peer grade (about 50 out of 2,700) and almost no complaints were registered. Interestingly, many participants commented later that although they initially viewed peer-grading as a constraint, most ended up enjoying it as they felt that grading enhances learning.
So what else did we learn? A few things:
People want to learn. With more than 9,000 registered and nearly 3,000 of them went through, this MOOC has shown that the desire to learn is there. The success of MOOCs all over the world is also evidence of that.
Most participants are people that the traditional teaching institutions do not serve well: workers, foreigners, in our case entrepreneurs. These are what Clayton Christensen calls in disruption literature the ‘non-consumers’. In other words, MOOCs don’t so much cannibalize existing schools as target non-consumers who couldn’t get education otherwise.
In addition, MOOCs democratize learning: what is striking in the population of participants is the diversity of origins: 63 countries were represented, participants aged between 16 and 78, 30 percent were women, and people ranged from self-taught to engineers and doctors, and all types of professions. After the French (74 percent) , we had participants from Ivory Coast, Morocco, Cameroon, Tunisia, Algeria, Senegal, Burkina Faso and French Canada (Quebec).
Furthermore, MOOCs are effective: Skeptics cannot accept that one can learn with a MOOC, but my results show that it works. Many participants testified that the MOOC had taught them useful things that would have a real impact in their professional lives.
This is particularly interesting insofar as this MOOC was conceived as a general introduction to principles rather than to provide tools one could use immediately.
A traditional argument is that nothing can be as good as classroom interaction to learn, but this is not true. With simple videos but with a lot of online interaction, good learning takes place. It might not be perfect, but which classroom is? It is cheap, convenient, and it does work. It provides value.
- Using student housing to sharpen your retention strategy - September 23, 2026
- Preparing with confidence: Reflections on the dissertation proposal defense - September 18, 2026
- Beyond the gotcha game: Moving from AI detection to verification-first supports stronger academic integrity - September 16, 2026