>'The report also suggests that MIT consider offering different levels of certification through its online-learning ventures, MITx and edX, and recommends that the Institute redouble its commitment to access and affordability — possibly by increasing MIT’s undergraduate population, which has remained stable for decades despite increasing demand, or by providing flexibility to allow students to complete a traditional undergraduate degree in less than four years.'

Personally, I'd hope to see 'differing levels of certification' expanded to the point of offering credit courses for distance learning. Go ahead and differentiate it further from the residential brand than MITx if necessary.

I've watched hours and hours of OCW, and completed several courses on MITx with a handful more scheduled for the fall. As a rule, these courses are far more challenging and just plain better than what I pay quite a bit to my state University for.

I would jump at the opportunity to pay MIT many multiples more than the pittance they charge for ID Verified courses on EdX in order to take MIT born credit courses.

>'The report recommends that MIT explore more modular approaches to teaching — both online and on-campus. Data from the first 17 MITx and HarvardX courses indicate that only about 5 percent of registrants earn a certificate of completion. This and other edX data, the report says, suggest that “students are focused more on learning certain elements of a class and less on completing what has traditionally been considered a module or unit of learning.”'

I can't say I agree with drawing or even supporting that conclusion from the poor completion rates. I think the overall completion rates are effectively meaningless - signing up is trivial and instant.

I did some crunching of the older stats EdX released a while back and from my foggy recollection even the tiniest measures of intent correlate with dramatically higher completion.

More modular courses aren't going to help the 35% of people who sign up but never even look at the courseware - it's already modular for all they know.

>'These edX results are in keeping with surveys of MIT’s own faculty and students: In a 2013 survey, 25 percent of MIT faculty, and 40 percent of MIT students, indicated that some of the Institute’s course offerings might benefit from being broken up into smaller modules.'

>'The unbundling of classes also reflects a larger trend in society — a number of other media offerings have become available in modules, whether it is a song from an album, an article from a newspaper, or a chapter from a textbook.”'

I can't say I agree with the idea of 'unbundling' courses much at all.

Personally, getting a 'holistic' understanding of the subject is precisely why I'm pursuing a degree and why I chose to work through books or MOOC courses as opposed browsing tutorials or StackOverflow posts as-needed.

I didn't always feel this way. I self taught myself into a career well above my apparent station in life and felt supremely confident that I could go on picking and choosing, learning whatever I needed to know next.

Eventually, I realized that the gaps in what I knew did just hold missing facts or techniques, they constituted missing questions too. Things I didn't even know to ask.

That's the value of a 'complete' course and education - the foundation and supporting framework that ensures you can always keep building.

Interestingly, the median age of people taking courses on EdX is 23-30 and the median age of on-campus students is surely below that. I didn't reach the above epiphany until I was 28 or 29, well into a respectable tower of a career.

It would not surprise me if the people who might think they want for $0.99 singles of education are following the same course.