Thoughts as an Online, MicroMaster Graduate

On Thursday morning last week, I had the honor of attending the first ever commencement ceremony for MITxMicromaster’s programs. I was excited to see my name listed as one of the 360 graduates of the MITxMicromasters program in Data, Economics and Development Policy and to hear Professor Esther Duflo (recent Nobel Laureate in Economics) provide the commencement address.

Sitting through the commencement provided me with an interesting juxtaposition when compared to the two-year, full-time MBA program I recently graduated from. For me, this online program satiated my demand for development economics technical learning. Furthermore, I think it is fair to say, it has had a significantly positive return on investment from not only a career capital perspective but also intellectual satisfaction.

The courses within the program provided background to not only the statistical and causal inference techniques that underpin development economics, but also investigated challenges in global poverty and logistical and implementation considerations for running randomized evaluations. Additionally, the academic rigor of the five, full-semester MIT classes provided a lot of the nuance I needed to more deeply empathize with the complexities associated with development challenges.

However, despite lauding praise on the program, I do believe such similar programs do not act as a direct substitute to traditional, in-person learning alternatives. If what you are looking to gain is technical knowledge and you are largely self-motivated by the material, then a program similar to this may be appropriate for you. However, I expect that especially for those earlier in their careers and who are utilizing learning as more of an exploratory tool, then one’s mileage may vary.

More specifically, some of the merits of the teaching approach and program, included:

· High Quality Teaching Material: The teaching material provided over the five courses mirrored the materials provided to MIT students, including readings and to a large extent problem sets and final exams.

· Teaching Methodology Appropriateness for Technical Content: Given that much of the content taught through the courses were highly technical, quantitative and accordingly more objective, the online teaching medium operated well. The lack of in-person communication was not a major deficiency for many of the courses.

· Flexibility with Minimal Opportunity Costs: While weekly deadlines for problem sets and lecture quizzes were in place, the flexibility afforded through online learning allowed me (and I suspect many) students to take the courses while maintaining other life-commitments. Furthermore, while there was some cost involved, the relatively minimal cost when compared to in-person alternatives lowered the barrier to entry and also eased the pressure to leave should a learner determine that completing the course was not best for them.

· Credible Signaling Mechanism: For the reasons outlined above, I have observed anecdotally that the Micromaster credential appears to be widely recognized and considered as a strong signaling mechanism to other development professionals and organizations. Accordingly, should a learner seek to pivot their career into the development economics space (or further their career), the program provides a cost-effective means through which to do this without having to necessarily sacrifice long-periods in full-time tertiary education.

To expound on some of the deficiencies in the program:

· Lack of Conversations: While discussion boards were available, there is no substitute to in-person interaction especially for material that can often be highly-emotionally charged and non-intuitive. I was able to chat through the materials with friends and members in my network who were similarly passionate about development, however for those that may not have that support mechanism there is a real chance that much of the content may feel non-contextualized.

· Contemporaneity of Materials: Some of the classes were based on lecture recordings that are now many years old. For the technical courses, such as statistics, I do not think this is a detriment however when discussing research findings, it would be good to see more contemporaneous research findings discussed as part of the content.

· Intra-Course Coherence: While there are benefits to having the courses be completed independently, I would have preferred to see more reference made to how the courses fit together. Often statistical techniques would be raised in one course without contextualization to other courses where such a technique would be relevant. It is disappointing to graduate the program without having had some form of capstone to pull together the lessons from the courses into a coherent whole.

· Minimal Sunk Costs: A challenge anyone who has started an online course can probably empathize with is lagging motivation to continue through to the end. I found the payments I made acted as some form of a commitment device as I fell for my own sunk cost fallacy, however I can see how many people living busy lives may either decide to audit courses or not continue through due to the lack of upfront investment.

In my mind there is no doubt that the inexorable push towards online education, accelerated by the implications of COVID-19, will continue. However, I think it is important that learners be mindful of the relative merits and deficiencies of online learning as a tool for meeting their own personal goals. As a mechanism for gaining technical skills in a field where you already are highly self-motivated, then online learning programs provide a tool for lifelong learning and intellectual appeasement. It can provide credible signaling mechanisms that may differentiate you from peers. However, in saying all of this, I still deeply believe there is a place for in-person learning for the foreseeable future.

As I write today, I will soon be joining IDinsight, an organization whose mission is to use data and evidence to help leaders alleviate poverty worldwide. If it were not for the lessons, I learnt through the MicroMasters program, I likely would not have been able to pivot my career from corporate consulting into the development space and I am deeply grateful for this.