Knowing Our Audience

Knowing Our Audience

UW–Madison's phase-one MOOCs gave faculty members a chance to explore new ways of teaching, research, and outreach, supported by a project team that could provide strategic planning, online course development, and evaluation. This initial offering consisted of four courses: "Video Games and Learning," "Markets with Frictions," "Human Evolution: Past and Future," and "Globalizing Higher Education and Research for the 'Knowledge Economy.'"

The MOOCs were faculty-centered, following a traditional

classroom model. Instructors shared their expertise with an audience of learners—albeit widely scattered learners who, rather than raising their hands in a classroom, watched instructional videos, engaged in activities relevant to their day-to-day lives, and typed their questions in discussion forums.

We approached phase one as an experiment in which we could learn by doing. We hoped to:

• Develop standards for a quality MOOC
• Document the needs of faculty, learners, and support staff
• Evaluate the learning-platform requirements

The experiment succeeded from the institution's standpoint. We learned how to design MOOCs and serve a more diverse audience. The participating faculty explored new ways of teaching and expressed satisfaction with the results.

More significantly, we learned about the people who signed up for our MOOCS. We conducted a pre-MOOC survey, a mid-MOOC survey, and a post-MOOC survey that collected perceptual, attitudinal, and demographic information. The surveys showed that phase-one MOOC participants fell into three overlapping motivational segments.

• General interest: people who wanted to find out what a MOOC was like, were interested in a topic, and sought a connection with like-minded participants.
• Career: people who wanted to prepare for a job or enhance existing job skills.
• Educational: students and teachers who were interested in a MOOC's content for their own research and classes.

Participants could have multiple motivations (see table 1). Nearly all participants fell into the General Interest category, but the Career and Educational categories were more mutually exclusive.

Table 1. UW–Madison MOOCs: Frequency Breakdown of Motivational Segments

Course	General Interest	Career	Educational
Videogames and Learning	801	411	169
Markets with Friction	353	142	187
Human Evolution	1,998	136	531
Globalizing Higher Education	330	93	269
Total	3,482	782	1,156

After evaluating the data, we drew these conclusions:

• Who Signs Up? We learned what kinds of participants we can attract with little more than the promotion provided by Coursera. They are the highly educated, older people who are strongly represented in MOOCs nationwide.⁴ The average age was 34, and 74 percent had at least a bachelor's degree.