[svedlin]

There's been a lot of discussion about the "completion rates" in online courses. A study in January reported that "only 4 percent of people who register for MOOCs actually finish them" but that "MOOCs still have considerable impact" because "nearly two-thirds got at least something out of the experience." [1]

One possible solution to this - instead of measuring progress against a single completion date, split courses up into a continuous series of milestones or smaller units. A student could cover 1 or more units.

While it's true some courses are considered prerequisites for others, the requirements could be made more granular (e.g.: course B unit 4 requires course A units 5 and 6). Discovering these dependencies could potentially be automated by text data mining the course material.

Courses are designed around a traditional college semester and reflect the amount of material that can be reasonably covered in that time period. However, that constraint shouldn't necessarily be the benchmark for all study programs.

[1] http://hechingerreport.org/content/harvard-mit-despite-low-c...