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    “MIT can give you ‘superpowers’”

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    Speaking at the virtual MITx MicroMasters Program Joint Completion Celebration last summer, Diogo da Silva Branco Magalhães described watching a Spider-Man movie with his 8-year-old son and realizing that his son thought MIT was a fictional entity that existed only in the Marvel universe.

    “I had to tell him that MIT also exists in the real world, and that some of the programs are available online for everyone,” says da Silva Branco Magalhães, who earned his credential in the MicroMasters in Statistics and Data Science program. “You don’t need to be a superhero to participate in an MIT program, but MIT can give you ‘superpowers.’ In my case, the superpower that I was looking to acquire was a better understanding of the key technologies that are shaping the future of transportation.

    Part of MIT Open Learning, the MicroMasters programs have drawn in almost 1.4 million learners, spanning nearly every country in the world. More than 7,500 people have earned their credentials across the MicroMasters programs, including: Statistics and Data Science; Supply Chain Management; Data, Economics, and Design of Policy; Principles of Manufacturing; and Finance. 

    Earning his MicroMasters credential not only gave da Silva Branco Magalhães a strong foundation to tackle more complex transportation problems, but it also opened the door to pursuing an accelerated graduate degree via a Northwestern University online program.

    Learners who earn their MicroMasters credentials gain the opportunity to apply to and continue their studies at a pathway school. The MicroMasters in Statistics and Data Science credential can be applied as credit for a master’s program at more than 30 universities, as well as MIT’s PhD Program in Social and Engineering Systems. Da Silva Branco Magalhães, originally from Portugal and now based in Australia, seized this opportunity and enrolled in Northwestern University’s Master’s in Data Science for MIT MicroMasters Credential Holders. 

    The pathway to an enhanced career

    The pathway model launched in 2016 with the MicroMasters in Supply Chain Management. Now, there are over 50 pathway institutions that offer more than 100 different programs for master’s degrees. With pathway institutions located around the world, MicroMasters credential holders can obtain master’s degrees from local residential or virtual programs, at a location convenient to them. They can receive credit for their MicroMasters courses upon acceptance, providing flexibility for online programs and also shortening the time needed on site for residential programs.

    “The pathways expand opportunities for learners, and also help universities attract a broader range of potential students, which can enrich their programs,” says Dana Doyle, senior director for the MicroMasters Program at MIT Open Learning. “This is a tangible way we can achieve our mission of expanding education access.”

    Da Silva Branco Magalhães began the MicroMasters in Statistics and Data Science program in 2020, ultimately completing the program in 2022.

    “After having worked for 20 years in the transportation sector in various roles, I realized I was no longer equipped as a professional to deal with the new technologies that were set to disrupt the mobility sector,” says da Silva Branco Magalhães. “It became clear to me that data and AI were the driving forces behind new products and services such as autonomous vehicles, on-demand transport, or mobility as a service, but I didn’t really understand how data was being used to achieve these outcomes, so I needed to improve my knowledge.”

    July 2023 MicroMasters Program Joint Completion Celebration for SCM, DEDP, PoM, SDS, and FinVideo: MIT Open Learning

    The MicroMasters in Statistics and Data Science was developed by the MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society and MITx. Credential holders are required to complete four courses equivalent to graduate-level courses in statistics and data science at MIT and a capstone exam comprising four two-hour proctored exams.

    “The content is world-class,” da Silva Branco Magalhães says of the program. “Even the most complex concepts were explained in a very intuitive way. The exercises and the capstone exam are challenging and stimulating — and MIT-level — which makes this credential highly valuable in the market.”

    Da Silva Branco Magalhães also found the discussion forum very useful, and valued conversations with his colleagues, noting that many of these discussions later continued after completion of the program.

    Gaining analysis and leadership skills

    Now in the Northwestern pathway program, da Silva Branco Magalhães finds that the MicroMasters in Statistics and Data Science program prepared him well for this next step in his studies. The nine-course, accelerated, online master’s program is designed to offer the same depth and rigor of Northwestern’s 12-course MS in Data Science program, aiming to help students build essential analysis and leadership skills that can be directly implemented into the professional realm. Students learn how to make reliable predictions using traditional statistics and machine learning methods.

    Da Silva Branco Magalhães says he has appreciated the remote nature of the Northwestern program, as he started it in France and then completed the first three courses in Australia. He also values the high number of elective courses, allowing students to design the master’s program according to personal preferences and interests.

    “I want to be prepared to meet the challenges and seize the opportunities that AI and data science technologies will bring to the professional realm,” he says. “With this credential, there are no limits to what you can achieve in the field of data science.” More

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      Learner in Afghanistan reaches beyond barriers to pursue career in data science

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      Tahmina S. was a junior studying computer engineering at a top university in Afghanistan when a new government policy banned women from pursuing education. In August 2021, the Taliban prohibited girls from attending school beyond the sixth grade. While women were initially allowed to continue to attend universities, by October 2021, an order from the Ministry of Higher Education declared that all women in Afghanistan were suspended from attending public and private centers of higher education.

      Determined to continue her studies and pursue her ambitions, Tahmina found the MIT Refugee Action Hub (ReACT) and was accepted to its Certificate in Computer Science and Data Science program in 2022.

      “ReACT helped me realize that I can do big things and be a part of big things,” she says.

      MIT ReACT provides education and professional opportunities to learners from refugee and forcibly displaced communities worldwide. ReACT’s core pillars include academic development, human skills development, employment pathways, and network building. Since 2017, ReACT has offered its Certificate in Computer and Data Science (CDS) program free-of-cost to learners wherever they live. In 2022, ReACT welcomed its largest and most diverse cohort to date — 136 learners from 29 countries — including 25 learners from Afghanistan, more than half of whom are women.

      Tahmina was able to select her classes in the program, and especially valued learning Python — which has led to her studying other programming languages and gaining more skills in data science. She’s continuing to take online courses in hopes of completing her undergraduate degree, and someday pursuing a masters degree in computer science and becoming a data scientist.

      “It’s an important and fun career. I really love data,” she says. “If this is my only time for this experience, I will bring to the table what I have, and do my best.”

      In addition to the education ban, Tahmina also faced the challenge of accessing an internet connection, which is expensive where she lives. But she regularly studies between 12 and 14 hours a day to achieve her dreams.

      The ReACT program offers a blend of asynchronous and synchronous learning. Learners complete a curated series of online, rigorous MIT coursework through MITx with the support of teaching assistants and collaborators, and also participate in a series of interactive online workshops in interpersonal skills that are critical to success in education and careers.

      ReACT learners engage with MIT’s global network of experts including MIT staff, faculty, and alumni — as well as collaborators across technology, humanitarian, and government sectors.

      “I loved that experience a lot, it was a huge achievement. I’m grateful ReACT gave me a chance to be a part of that team of amazing people. I’m amazed I completed that program, because it was really challenging.”

      Theory into practice

      Tahmina was one of 10 students from the ReACT cohort accepted to the highly competitive MIT Innovation Leadership Bootcamp program. She worked on a team of five people who initiated a business proposal and took the project through each phase of the development process. Her team’s project was creating an app for finance management for users aged 23-51 — including all the graphic elements and a final presentation. One valuable aspect of the boot camp, Tahmina says, was presenting their project to real investors who then provided business insights and actionable feedback.

      As part of this ReACT cohort, Tahmina also participated in the Global Apprenticeship Program (GAP) pilot, an initiative led by Talanta and with the participation of MIT Open Learning as curriculum provider. The GAP initiative focuses on improving diverse emerging talent job preparedness and exploring how companies can successfully recruit, onboard, and retain this talent through remote, paid internships. Through the GAP pilot, Tahmina received training in professional skills, resume and interview preparation, and was matched with a financial sector firm for a four-month remote internship in data science.

      To prepare Tahmina and other learners for these professional experiences, ReACT trains its cohorts to work with people who have diverse backgrounds, experiences, and challenges. The nonprofit Na’amal offered workshops covering areas such as problem-solving, innovation and ideation, goal-setting, communication, teamwork, and infrastructure and info security. Tahmina was able to access English classes and learn valuable career skills, such as writing a resume.“This was an amazing part for me. There’s a huge difference going from theoretical to practical,” she says. “Not only do you have to have the theoretical experience, you have to have soft skills. You have to communicate everything you learn to other people, because other people in the business might not have that knowledge, so you have to tell the story in a way that they can understand.”

      ReACT wanted the women in the program to be mentored by women who were not only leaders in the tech field, but working in the same geographic region as learners. At the start of the internship, Na’amal connected Tahmina with a mentor, Maha Gad, who is head of talent development at Talabat and lives in Dubai. Tahmina met with Gad at the beginning and end of each month, giving her the opportunity to ask expansive questions. Tahmina says Gad encouraged her to research and plan first, and then worked with her to explore new tools, like Trello.

      Wanting to put her skills to use locally, Tahmina volunteered at the nonprofit Rumie, a community for Afghan women and girls, working as a learning designer, translator, team leader, and social media manager. She currently volunteers at Correspondents of the World as a story ambassador, helping Afghan people share stories, community, and culture — especially telling the stories of Afghan women and the changes they’ve made in the world.

      “It’s been the most beautiful journey of my life that I will never forget,” says Tahmina. “I found ReACT at a time when I had nothing, and I found the most valuable thing.” More

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      Democratizing education: Bringing MIT excellence to the masses

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      How do you quantify the value of education or measure success? For the team behind the MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society’s (IDSS) MicroMasters Program in Statistics and Data Science (SDS), providing over 1,000 individuals from around the globe with access to MIT-level programming feels like a pretty good place to start. 

      Thanks to the MIT-conceived MicroMasters-style format, SDS faculty director Professor Devavrat Shah and his colleagues have eliminated the physical restrictions created by a traditional brick-and-mortar education, allowing 1,178 learners and counting from 89 countries access to an MIT education.

      “Taking classes from a Nobel Prize winner doesn’t happen every day,” says Oscar Vele, a strategic development worker for the town of Cuenca, Ecuador. “My dream has always been to study at MIT. I knew it was not easy — now, through this program, my dream came true.”

      “With an online forum, in principle, admission is no longer the gate — the merit is a gate,” says Shah. “If you take a class that is MIT-level, and if you perform at MIT-level, then you should get MIT-level credentials.”

      The MM SDS program, delivered in collaboration with MIT Open Learning, plays a key role in the IDSS mission of advancing education in data science, and supports MIT’s overarching belief that everyone should be able to access a quality education no matter what their life circumstances may be.

      “Getting a program like this up and running to the point where it has credentials and credibility across the globe, is an important milestone for us,” says Shah. “Basically, for us, it says we are here to stay, and we are just getting started.”

      Since the program launched in 2018, Shah says he and his team have seen learners from all walks of life, from high-schoolers looking for a challenge to late-in-life learners looking to either evolve or refresh their knowledge.

      “Then there are individuals who want to prove to themselves that they can achieve serious knowledge and build a career,” Shah says. “Circumstances throughout their lives, whether it’s the country or socioeconomic conditions they’re born in, they have never had the opportunity to do something like this, and now they have an MIT-level education and credentials, which is a huge deal for them.”

      Many learners overcome challenges to complete the program, from financial hardships to balancing work, home life, and coursework, and finding private, internet-enabled space for learning — not to mention the added complications of a global pandemic. One Ukrainian learner even finished the program after fleeing her apartment for a bomb shelter.

      Remapping the way to a graduate degree

      For Diogo da Silva Branco Magalhaes, a 44-year-old lifelong learner, curiosity and the desire to evolve within his current profession brought him to the MicroMasters program. Having spent 15 years working in the public transport sector, da Silva Branco Magalhaes had a very specific challenge at the front of his mind: artificial intelligence.

      “It’s not science fiction; it’s already here,” he says. “Think about autonomous vehicles, on-demand transportation, mobility as a service — AI and data, in particular, are the driving force of a number of disruptions that will affect my industry.”

      When he signed up for the MicroMasters Program in Statistics and Data Science, da Silva Branco Magalhaes’ said he had no long-term plans, but was taking a first step. “I just wanted to have a first contact with this reality, understand the basics, and then let’s see how it goes,” he describes.

      Now, after earning his credentials in 2021, he finds himself a few weeks into an accelerated master’s program at Northwestern University, one of several graduate pathways supported by the MM SDS program.

      “I was really looking to gain some basic background knowledge; I didn’t expect the level of quality and depth they were able to provide in an online lecture format,” he says. “Having access to this kind of content — it’s a privilege, and now that we have it, we have to make the most of it.”

      A refreshing investment

      As an applied mathematician with 15 years of experience in the U.S. defense sector, Celia Wilson says she felt comfortable with her knowledge, though not 100 percent confident that her math skills could stand up against the next generation.

      “I felt I was getting left behind,” she says. “So I decided to take some time out and invest in myself, and this program was a great opportunity to systematize and refresh my knowledge of statistics and data science.”

      Since completing the course, Wilson says she has secured a new job as a director of data and analytics, where she is confident in her ability to manage a team of the “new breed of data scientists.” It turns out, however, that completing the program has given her an even greater gift than self-confidence.

      “Most importantly,” she adds, “it’s inspired my daughters to tell anyone who will listen that math is definitely for girls.”

      Connecting an engaged community

      Each course is connected to an online forum that allows learners to enhance their experience through real-time conversations with others in their cohort.

      “We have worked hard to provide a scalable version of the traditional teaching assistant support system that you would get in a usual on-campus class, with a great online forum for people to connect with each other as learners,” Shah says.

      David Khachatrian, a data scientist working on improving the drug discovery pipeline, says that leveraging the community to hone his ability to “think clearly and communicate effectively with others” mattered more than anything.

      “Take the opportunity to engage with your community of fellow learners and facilitators — answer questions for others to give back to the community, solidify your own understanding, and practice your ability to explain clearly,” Khachatrian says. “These skills and behaviors will help you to succeed not just in SDS, but wherever you go in the future.”

      “There were a lot of active contributions from a lot of learners and I felt it was really a very strong component of the course,” da Silva Branco Magalhaes adds. “I had some offline contact with other students who are connections that I’ve kept up with to this day.”

      A solid path forward

      “We have a dedicated team supporting the MM SDS community on the MIT side,” Shah says, citing the contributions of Karene Chu, MM SDS assistant director of education; Susana Kevorkova, the MM SDS program manager; and Jeremy Rossen, MM program coordinator. “They’ve done so much to ensure the success of the program and our learners, and they are constantly adding value to the program — like identifying real-time supplementary opportunities for learners to participate in, including the IDSS Policy Hackathon.”

      The program now holds online “graduation” ceremonies, where credential holders from all over the world share their experiences. Says Shah, who looks forward to celebrating the next 1,000 learners: “Every time I think about it, I feel emotional. It feels great, and it keeps us going.” More

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      Research, education, and connection in the face of war

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      When Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Tetiana Herasymova had several decisions to make: What should she do, where should she live, and should she take her MITx MicroMasters capstone exams? She had registered for the Statistics and Data Science Program’s final exams just days prior to moving out of her apartment and into a bomb shelter. Although it was difficult to focus on studying and preparations with air horns sounding overhead and uncertainty lingering around her, she was determined to try. “I wouldn’t let the aggressor in the war squash my dreams,” she says.

      A love of research and the desire to improve teaching 

      An early love of solving puzzles and problems for fun piqued Herasymova’s initial interest in mathematics. When she later pursued her PhD in mathematics at Kiev National Taras Shevchenko University, Herasymova’s love of math evolved into a love of research. Throughout Herasymova’s career, she’s worked to close the gap between scientific researchers and educators. Starting as a math tutor at MBA Strategy, a company that prepares Ukrainian leaders for qualifying standardized tests for MBA programs, she was later promoted as the head of their test preparation department. Afterward, she moved on to an equivalent position at ZNOUA, a new project that prepared high school students for Ukraine’s standardized test, and she eventually became ZNOUA’s CEO.

      In 2018, she founded Prosteer, a “self-learning community” of educators who share research, pedagogy, and experience to learn from one another. “It’s really interesting to have a community of teachers from different domains,” she says, speaking of educators and researchers whose specialties range across language, mathematics, physics, music, and more.

      Implementing new pedagogical research in the classroom is often up to educators who seek out studies on an individual basis, Herasymova has found. “Lots of scientists are not practitioners,” she says, and the reverse is also true. She only became more determined to build these connections once she was promoted to head of test preparation at MBA Strategy because she wanted to share more effective pedagogy with the tutors she was mentoring.

      First, Herasymova knew she needed a way to measure the teachers’ effectiveness. She was able to determine whether students who received the company’s tutoring services improved their scores. Moreover, Ukraine keeps an open-access database of national standardized test scores, so anyone could analyze the data in hopes of improving the level of education in the country. She says, “I could do some analytics because I am a mathematician, but I knew I could do much more with this data if I knew data science and machine learning knowledge.”

      That’s why Herasymova sought out the MITx MicroMasters Program in Statistics and Data Science offered by the MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS). “I wanted to learn the fundamentals so I could join the Learning Analytics domain,” she says. She was looking for a comprehensive program that covered the foundations without being overly basic. “I had some knowledge from the ground, so I could see the deepness of that course,” she says. Because of her background as an instructional designer, she thought the MicroMasters curriculum was well-constructed, calling the variety of videos, practice problems, and homework assignments that encouraged learners to approach the course material in different ways, “a perfect experience.”

      Another benefit of the MicroMasters program was its online format. “I had my usual work, so it was impossible to study in a stationary way,” she says. She found the structure to be more flexible than other programs. “It’s really great that you can construct your course schedule your own way, especially with your own adult life,” she says.

      Determination and support in the midst of war

      When the war first forced Herasymova to flee her apartment, she had already registered to take the exams for her four courses. “It was quite hard to prepare for exams when you could hear explosions outside of the bomb shelter,” she says. She and other Ukranians were invited to postpone their exams until the following session, but the next available testing period wouldn’t be held until October. “It was a hard decision, but I had to allow myself to try,” she says. “For all people in Ukraine, when you don’t know if you’re going to live or die, you try to live in the now. You have to appreciate every moment and what life brings to you. You don’t say, ‘Someday’ — you do it today or tomorrow.”

      In addition to emotional support from her boyfriend, Herasymova had a group of friends who had also enrolled in the program, and they supported each other through study sessions and an ongoing chat. Herasymova’s personal support network helped her accomplish what she set out to do with her MicroMasters program, and in turn, she was able to support her professional network. While Prosteer halted its regular work during the early stages of the war, Herasymova was determined to support the community of educators and scientists that she had built. They continued meeting weekly to exchange ideas as usual. “It’s intrinsic motivation,” she says. They managed to restore all of their activities by October.

      Despite the factors stacked against her, Herasymova’s determination paid off — she passed all of her exams in May, the final step to earning her MicroMasters certificate in statistics and data science. “I just couldn’t believe it,” she says. “It was definitely a bifurcation point. The moment when you realize that you have something to rely on, and that life is just beginning to show all its diversity despite the fact that you live in war.” With her newly minted certificate in hand, Herasymova has continued her research on the effectiveness of educational models — analyzing the data herself — with a summer research program at New York University. 

      The student becomes the master

      After moving seven times between February and October, heading west from Kyiv until most recently settling near the border of Poland, Herasymova hopes she’s moved for the last time. Ukrainian Catholic University offered her a position teaching both mathematics and programming. Before enrolling in the MicroMasters Program in Statistics and Data Science, she had some prior knowledge of programming languages and mathematical algorithms, but she didn’t know Python. She took MITx’s Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python to prepare. “It gave me a huge step forward,” she says. “I learned a lot. Now, not only can I work with Python machine learning models in programming language R, I also have knowledge of the big picture of the purpose and the point to do so.”

      In addition to the skills the MicroMasters Program trained her in, she gained firsthand experience in learning new subjects and exploring topics more deeply. She will be sharing that practice with the community of students and teachers she’s built, plus, she plans on guiding them through this course during the next year. As a continuation of her own educational growth, says she’s looking forward to her next MITx course this year, Data Analysis.

      Herasymova advises that the best way to keep progressing is investing a lot of time. “Adults don’t want to hear this, but you need one or two years,” she says. “Allow yourself to be stupid. If you’re an expert in one domain and want to switch to another, or if you want to understand something new, a lot of people don’t ask questions or don’t ask for help. But from this point, if I don’t know something, I know I should ask for help because that’s the start of learning. With a fixed mindset, you won’t grow.”

      July 2022 MicroMasters Program Joint Completion Celebration. Ukrainian student Tetiana Herasymova, who completed her program amid war in her home country, speaks at 43:55. More

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      Studying learner engagement during the Covid-19 pandemic

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      While massive open online classes (MOOCs) have been a significant trend in higher education for many years now, they have gained a new level of attention during the Covid-19 pandemic. Open online courses became a critical resource for a wide audience of new learners during the first stages of the pandemic — including students whose academic programs had shifted online, teachers seeking online resources, and individuals suddenly facing lockdown or unemployment and looking to build new skills.

      Mary Ellen Wiltrout, director of online and blended learning initiatives and lecturer in digital learning in the Department of Biology, and Virginia “Katie” Blackwell, currently an MIT PhD student in biology, published a paper this summer in the European MOOC Stakeholder Summit (EMOOCs 2021) conference proceedings evaluating data for the online course 7.00x (Introduction to Biology). Their research objective was to better understand whether the shift to online learning that occurred during the pandemic led to increased learner engagement in the course.Blackwell participated in this research as part of the Bernard S. and Sophie G. Gould MIT Summer Research Program (MSRP) in Biology, during the uniquely remote MSRPx-Biology 2020 student cohort. She collaborated on the project while working toward her bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and molecular biology from the University of Texas at Dallas, and collaborated on the research while in Texas. She has since applied and been accepted into MIT’s PhD program in biology.

      “MSRP Biology was a transformative experience for me. I learned a lot about the nature of research and the MIT community in a very short period of time and loved every second of the program. Without MSRP, I would never have even considered applying to MIT for my PhD. After MSRP and working with Mary Ellen, MIT biology became my first-choice program and I felt like I had a shot at getting in,” says Blackwell.

      Play video

      Many MOOC platforms experienced increased website traffic in 2020, with 30 new MOOC-based degrees and more than 60 million new learners.

      “We find that the tremendous, lifelong learning opportunities that MOOCs provide are even more important and sought-after when traditional education is disrupted. During the pandemic, people had to be at home more often, and some faced unemployment requiring a career transition,” says Wiltrout.

      Wiltrout and Blackwell wanted to build a deeper understanding of learner profiles rather than looking exclusively at enrollments. They looked at all available data, including: enrollment demographics (i.e., country and “.edu” participants); proportion of learners engaged with videos, problems, and forums; number of individual engagement events with videos, problems, and forums; verification and performance; and the course “track” level — including auditing (for free) and verified (paying and receiving access to additional course content, including access to a comprehensive competency exam). They analyzed data in these areas from five runs of 7.00x in this study, including three pre-pandemic runs of April, July, and November 2019 and two pandemic runs of March and July 2020. 

      The March 2020 run had the same count of verified-track participants as all three pre-pandemic runs combined. The July 2020 run enrolled nearly as many verified-track participants as the March 2020 run. Wiltrout says that introductory biology content may have attracted great attention during the early days and months of the Covid-19 pandemic, as people may have had a new (or renewed) interest in learning about (or reviewing) viruses, RNA, the inner workings of cells, and more.

      Wiltrout and Blackwell found that the enrollment count for the March 2020 run of the course increased at almost triple the rate of the three pre-pandemic runs. During the early days of March 2020, the enrollment metrics appeared similar to enrollment metrics for the April 2019 run — both in rate and count — but the enrollment rate increased sharply around March 15, 2020. The July 2020 run began with more than twice as many learners already enrolled by the first day of the course, but continued with half the enrollment rate of the March 2020 course. In terms of learner demographics, during the pandemic, there was a higher proportion of learners with .edu addresses, indicating that MOOCs were often used by students enrolled in other schools. 

      Viewings of course videos increased at the beginning of the pandemic. During the March 2020 run, both verified-track and certified participants viewed far more unique videos during March 2020 than in the pre-pandemic runs of the course; even auditor-track learners — not aiming for certification — still viewed all videos offered. During the July 2020 run, however, both verified-track and certified participants viewed far fewer unique videos than during all prior runs. The proportion of participants who viewed at least one video decreased in the July 2020 run to 53 percent, from a mean of 64 percent in prior runs. Blackwell and Wiltrout say that this decrease — as well as the overall dip in participation in July 2020 — might be attributed to shifting circumstances for learners that allowed for less time to watch videos and participate in the course, as well as some fatigue from the extra screen time.

      The study found that 4.4 percent of March 2020 participants and 4.5 percent of July 2020 participants engaged through forum posting — which was 1.4 to 3.3 times higher than pre-pandemic proportions of forum posting. The increase in forum engagement may point to a desire for community engagement during a time when many were isolated and sheltering in place.

      “Through the day-to-day work of my research team and also through the engagement of the learners in 7.00x, we can see that there is great potential for meaningful connections in remote experiences,” says Wiltrout. “An increase in participation for an online course may not always remain at the same high level, in the long term, but overall, we’re continuing to see an increase in the number of MOOCs and other online programs offered by all universities and institutions, as well as an increase in online learners.” More