What is a Successful MOOC? Lessons from Global Learner Narratives

In traditional academic programs offered by colleges and universities, success is typically defined and measured by the institution itself, academic leaders within it, external accrediting agencies, and governmental or field-specific regulatory standards. To achieve a similar understanding of quality in the MOOC context, however, requires knowledge of learners' concepts of success, given their agency to explore, enroll, and end course engagement with limited financial or other implications. This shift in the academic power dynamics from institutions to learners, core to the MOOC model, also makes an understanding of courses' impact and utility difficult to fully capture, particularly via quantitative measures at scale. To better understand how learners identify a successful open course, we interviewed a globally representative sample of 70 MOOC learners in 28 countries on all inhabited continents. Using qualitative analysis and a theoretical framework of human capabilities, we found that learners commonly evaluate MOOCs as successful when they include a combination of six criteria across two domains: modality affordances and course attributes.