HarvardX research sheds light on gender balances in MOOCs

Although the first semester of the 2013-14 academic year is coming to a close on campus and residential students are finishing up coursework and preparing for the break, the timelines are more asynchronous for students registered for 10 currently running online offerings on HarvardX.

While course development teams are working to create the most stimulating learning experiences and thinking about whether and how to give students a mini-winter break in their courses or modules (or summer break for those in the Southern Hemisphere), the research team is busy studying the troves of data produced by past and current online offerings, working with course developers to set up learning experiments, and helping to facilitate research-based innovation at HarvardX.

As part of our work to inform course development and research, the research team generated course-specific and HarvardX-wide worldwide gender composition data.