Sebastian Thrun Believes That Mentoring Will Make Moocs 20 Times Better

FARIDABAD, India - Jan. 24, 2014 - PRLog -- In a reply to a comment by Edward Luce that MOOCs are no magic bullet, CEO of Udacity Sebastian Thrun has admitted that it may be true. However he has also mentioned that ‘with appropriate mentoring, our data suggest we can do up to 20 times better.’

The reply was posted by Thrun in the form of a letter on the 26^th of November, 2013. It was addressed to Edward Luce within a day of the latter stating the above through his online column. Luce wrote that the medium of instruction is hardly going to make a difference if the content is not relevant to the job market, supporting claims by author Tyler Cowen that content, rather than medium is the crisis plaguing the American education system.

Referring to the first three years of their existence as MOOCs 1.0, he hinted at new developments in the world of MOOCs. He cited data from a pilot study that Udacity ran at the University of San José, going on to write that mentoring will make MOOCs 1.0 20 times better. He wrote that a group of students who had received mentoring for their MOOCs had a pass rate of 71%, similar to the pass rates of face to face courses. For the rest of the groups, the attrition rate was as high as 96%.

MOOCs Mentor had anticipated the need for mentoring services for MOOCs and has been actively involved since the past year in making arrangements for the same. We have a team of more than 300 mentors with qualifications that span the entire spectrum of academic subjects. We offer mentoring for more than 600 courses brought to you by major course providers such as Coursera, edX, FutureLearn, Iversity, OpenYale, Open Learning Initiative and Carnegie.