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Duke's entrance into the MOOC space with a course on Bioelectricity. Participation peaked at 1000 students per week. 12,000 students enrolled from 100 countries. The educational range of students varied greatly. 313 students successfully completed the course.

Rethinking MOOCs

Thanks for sharing, Xiaodi! Here's a related story about Duke University's participation in online learning. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/01/education/duke-university-leaves-semester-online.html?ref=education&_r=0

Very disturbing findings. Here's a quick excerpt: "There is still debate over whether scientific collaboration leads to better results. Jonathon Cummings, an associate professor of management at Duke University, and his colleagues got a grant from the National Science Foundation to look at 491 research collaborations funded by the foundation. They discovered something unsettling: Collaborations of more universities fared worse than projects primarily executed at a single university. More collaborators meant fewer patent applications, fewer published papers, and less chance of the group seeking additional funding to keep projects going." "Dr. Cummings says it appears that the amount of coordination required to make progress on research-everything from setting up meetings to integrating knowledge among group members-outweighed the potential benefits of collaboration. In the wake of the study, he says, the science foundation now requires grant applicants for some programs to detail how they expect to manage the collaboration."