Dive Brief:

• Harvard and MIT researchers say that completion rates for MOOCs are "misleading and counterproductive indicators" of the courses' success and potential.
• The report draws conclusions from data taken from 17 MOOCs offered by Harvard and MIT.
• One researcher says it's clear from the research that MOOC students come into the course with different expectations, and measuring MOOCs against a conventional course metric such as completion rate may not be useful.

Dive Insight:

In an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education, Andrew Dean Ho, the director of Harvard's MOOC research, said he hopes to classify MOOC students according to their reasons for taking a MOOC in the future. Regarding completion rates, he says: "People are projecting their own desires onto MOOCs and then holding them accountable for criteria that the instructors and institutions and, most importantly, students don’t hold for themselves."