Assessing the effect of Massive Open Online Courses as remedial courses in higher education

ABSTRACT

The current study assesses the effect of using Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) with the specific goal of providing remedial education. The data refer to an Italian flagship university, Politecnico di Milano, where a MOOC platform was launched following the strategy ‘MOOCs to bridge the gaps’. Hence, the study aims at assessing the effect of students completing a MOOC taken as a foundation course in physics on their ability to pass the subsequent on-campus exam in physics (N = 2,830). The research used Propensity Score Matching (PSM), basing the propensity scores on personal and academic information about the students. The results show that completers are 7 to 16 percentage points more likely to pass the related exam than the other students enrolled in the same MOOCs. These findings support the idea that using MOOCs for remedial purposes is effective in terms of student achievement within a formal education context.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• online learning
• MOOC
• remedial education
• propensity score matching

Acknowledgments

Authors would like to thank Susanna Sancassani, Federica Brambilla, Luigi Bissolotti and all the staff from PoliMi who helped and supported us in data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tommaso Agasisti

Tommaso Agasisti is Professor at Politecnico di Milano, School of Management and Associate Dean for Internationalization, Quality and Services at MIP Politecnico di Milano Graduate School of Business. His studies are in the field of Public Economics and Finance, Public Management and Policy, with particular reference to the educational sector.

Giovanni Azzone

Giovanni Azzone is Professor of Business Economics and from 2010 to 2016 he was Rector at Politecnico di Milano. His research activities are mainly in the field of organisational analysis and accounting and management control in private and public organisations with more than 65 publications on international journals and books.

Mara Soncin

Mara Soncin is Junior Assistant Professor at Politecnico di Milano, School of Management. Her main field of research concerns the evaluation of the performances of digital learning initiatives in Higher Education. Her research interests also involve educational management and the use of econometric models for the evaluation of educational policies.