Open Door to Open SUNY – MOOC Access and Completion Project (Open Door)

Abstract

In 2012, 2.6% of institutions across the United States were offering Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) with an increase to 8% in 2014 (Babson, 2014). Open SUNY is within the 8%, entering the MOOC arena in 2013. Open SUNY MOOCs are currently being offered by faculty from Stony Brook University, University at Albany, Empire State College, Broome Community College, and Buffalo State College (OpenSUNY MOOC, 2015). In this short time, Open SUNY MOOCs have attracted and enrolled a total of 92,413 students with plans to continue growing both student enrollments and the variety of course offerings. One of the key goals of the Open Door project is to establish a process for converting unmanageable data sets to useable learning analytics. Current data sets offer some insights for MOOC faculty but lack the ease with which many learning systems allow for usable data aggregation and analysis leading to an impact on practice (Straumsheim, 2014). With nearly 100,000 enrollments and growing, establishing a process for converting this data to a useable format is paramount to our existing and future MOOC faculty developing and customizing courses leading to student access, completion, and success as well as for establishing Open SUNY MOOCs as exemplars-at-large throughout the professional and academic communities.