“Most people taking free online courses worldwide are among the best-educated and wealthiest of the population, casting doubt on the idea that the classes will benefit the disenfranchised, a survey showed.
More than half of those taking massive open online courses, or MOOCs, were men and the majority were already employed, according to Ezekiel Emanuel, vice provost for Global Initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the authors of the correspondence piece in today’s journal Nature.”
— “Survey: Rich kids reap benefits of online courses,” Nicole Ostrow, Bloomberg via Salon [link added]
Related:
“How India, Rwanda, and El Salvador are solving the biggest problem in online education,” Lauren Alix Brown, Quartz
“Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2013: MOOCs and Anti-MOOCs,” Audrey Watters, Hack Education
“MOOC Busters,” Chronicle of Higher Education
“Study Shows MOOCS Have Relatively Few Active Users, With Only a Few Persisting to Course End” (press release), Kat Stein, Penn GSE
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