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"Across 12 courses, participants who paid for “ID-verified” certificates (with costs ranging from $50 to $250) earned certifications at a higher rate than other
by bruceb 12y ago
"Across 12 courses, participants who paid for “ID-verified” certificates (with costs ranging from $50 to $250) earned certifications at a higher rate than other participants: 59 percent, on average, compared to 5 percent. Students opting for the ID-verified track appear to have stronger intentions to complete courses, and the monetary stake may add an extra form of motivation."
Would be interesting to know more about these people.
- reddyb 12y agoHere we go : "We review preliminary demographic and outcome data for participants who pay to “ID-verify” their certificates. They are slightly older, more educated, more domestic, and less often female than non-verifying participants in the same course." Moreover since they are "more educated" and the paper also mentions that students are in general graduates in a "disproportionate manner", I assume that these people are very likely to be graduates. The paper is here : http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2586847 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2586847
- griffinmahon 12y agoI'm one of them! But in the end I got behind in the course (it was on the Magna Carta, very interesting), and it closed before I could finish the material/assignments, so I unfortunately wasted 40 dollars (except I like to think of it as a donation to Coursera).
- gms7777 12y agoI'm curious how much the effect is causal vs correlational. That is are students that sign up for certificates more likely to finish (because maybe they feel like they've already paid and don't want to waste it) or are students that are more likely to finish more likely to sign up for certificates in the first place? I would guess both effects are present but I'd like to know how it breaks down.