MOOCs Benefit Residential: Shaping the Future of Work

Teaching in the online world has potential to improve the quality of education at MIT. Interaction between residential students and online MOOC participants can be leveraged to enrich the educational experience of residential students.

Educational Challenge

The workers that MBA graduates will lead and manage often hold different perspectives on career issues from their managers. It is important for MBA students to learn how people in the workforce feel about labor-related concerns that affect them.

Problem: In 15.662, Shaping the Future of Work, Professor Tom Kochan wondered how to engage his students with people in the global workforce to expose them to their unique concerns and outlooks?

Solution: Kochan designed the MOOC version of the course, 15.662x, in such a way that the MBA students in 15.662 served as Community Teaching Assistants. Kochan: “The [CTAs] helped facilitate online discussions by seeding conversations with their own experiences and introducing new resources. They also occasionally responded to students’ questions and helped facilitate a negotiations exercise. The MBA students loved the fact that they could engage with people in the workforce.”

Key Take-Aways

Online participants in MOOCs are a valuable resource to MIT students. Faculty can use what they learn through their teaching in the online world to improve the quality of education on campus.

Learn more about 15.662x on OCW Educator.

If you are interested in using the concepts from this case study in your teaching, please contact MITx Residential to speak with a consultant.