Over the past few months, a lot of ink has been spilled, and pixels displayed, on the subject of Massive, Open, Online Courses (MOOCs).  For me, three particular types of stories have stood out: two by their presence, and one by its absence.

The first kind are those breathless, OTT pieces about how MOOCs are either “changing universities for good” (Don Tapscott), or “definitely a disruptive industry” (Clayton Christensen).  It’s never entirely clear what the factual basis for these claims are – in Tapscott’s case, it seems all it took was watching a single panel discussion at Davos (classic M.O. from a man whose relationship with empirical evidence might, at best, be called “casual”).  These stories are mostly tripe, but they unfortunately dominate the MOOC discourse.

A second type of story – one which is a bit more interesting – is the, “MOOC as revelatory teaching experience” piece.  In these, an experienced teacher talks about the process of creating a MOOC, and how changing the mode of delivery has forced him/her to re-think certain aspects of pedagogy.  I like these because they show that MOOCs are sparking an interesting and useful debate about teaching and learning, which I suspect will have repercussions right through the academy.

But these stories have, for me, provoked an interesting question: where are the stories about students?  Why don’t we have tales of students (real, full-time undergraduates, the ones for whom universities exist) talking about what a life-changing experience a MOOC is?  Could it possibly be that such students don’t exist?  That the market for MOOCs is composed entirely of educated professionals looking for some edutainment?  That the very idea that undergraduates are desperate to choose courses a la carte from universities around the world (thank you, Glen Murray) is utter hogwash?

We recently decided to test this proposition using our MyCanEd Student Panel.  We asked students if they had they ever, over the course of their current program, taken (or thought about taking) a course at another institution in-person, a for-credit online course, or a MOOC.   Here’s what they said:

Have Students Taken or Considered Taking Courses Outside Their Home Institution?

The idea that students are already out shopping for courses is simply wrong; over 60% have never even considered taking a course outside their home institution.  Roughly a third have considered an online course at sometime, but fewer than one in four who do so actually take it.  As for MOOCs, only 4% say they have taken one (of which 60% were from Coursera – no other provider cracked 10%); of the rest, seven out of eight say they have never considered taking one.

On this evidence, MOOCs may be up-ending the market for adult education, but they have an awfully long way to go to disrupt undergraduate education.