Who Didn't Show Up

•  We learned what kinds okfjdf 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.
• Who Didn't Show Up? Wisconsin residents accounted for only 1.2 percent of participants, and Wisconsin was ninth in the ranking of MOOC participants by state. For an institution that prides itself on connecting with people in the state, these figures seemed low.
• What Is the Ideal Length for a Course? For all but one of the MOOCs, more than half of survey respondents expressed an interest in a shorter course. Data indicate an uptick in dropouts at weeks four and five.
• What Makes a Course Meaningful? Surveys suggested that participants got more out of a MOOC if it tied in with a local or individual concern. In "Human Evolution: Past and Future," for example, students liked the fact that Professor John Hawks had them measure their own feet, along with taking impressions of their own teeth with a mouthful of gum—a way to personally involve them in discussions of evolution.
• What Is the Best Predictor of Behavior? Individual motivations for taking a MOOC predicted everything from whether participants stayed with a course to whether they would pay for one. In "Video Games and Learning," career-focused participants were more likely to drop out; they were also more likely to express a desire for interaction with students and instructors. In "Human Evolution: Past and Future," the general-interest participants were less likely to want to take the course for credit.

These lessons from the phase-one MOOCs shaped our approach to phase two. The six new courses will:

• Be no longer than four weeks
• Get a stronger promotional push from UW–Madison
• Reach out to Wisconsin citizens and communities
• Take into account the varying motivations for participating in a MOOC

We determined that the best way to handle these varying motivations is for faculty to identify the audience for a MOOC right from the start. Rather than teaching to a vaguely defined group of global learners, they designed their courses for a more well-defined group that would be highly likely to benefit from it.

To address the relatively low interest in UW–Madison MOOCs among Wisconsin residents, we decided to focus phase two on the state we serve as a land-grant university. While keeping the courses accessible to 100,000-plus people around the world, we also seek to intensely engage with 5,000-plus people in Wisconsin.

A Community of Learners

Our phase-two MOOCs are less about courses than about community. The idea is to create learning experiences around Wisconsin—experiences that may occur outside the online space.⁵

Aldo Leopold

Most of these new MOOCs reflect Wisconsin's ongoing dedication to sustainability.⁶ For example, "The Land Ethic Reclaimed: Perceptive Hunting, Aldo Leopold, and Conservation" explores the history of wildlife management, an approach to conservation Leopold pioneered as a UW–Madison professor in the 1930s. "Changing Weather and Climate in the Great Lakes Region" will use data from the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts to demonstrate how climate change affects our part of the country. "Forests and Humans" emphasizes the importance of the world's forest biomes, making connections between the Midwest and such far-flung places as Madagascar and Quito.

To complement the online learning community, the university hopes to build "physical learning communities" around these courses, aimed at specific audiences. To do so, we are pursuing partnerships with statewide institutions to plan events related to the topics. "Shakespeare in Community" will connect learners with the Shakespearean troupe American Players Theatre in the southwestern Wisconsin town of Spring Green. For "Changing Weather and Climate in the Great Lakes Region," local community members will facilitate meetings at Wisconsin libraries, with help from the library association WiLS.