Case Study: MIT increases MOOC student engagement and reduces instructor workload with MathWorks' MATLAB Online and MATLAB Grader

MIT Increases Student Engagement in Massive Open Online Courses Using MATLAB

MIT faced the challenge of increasing student engagement in its massive open online courses (MOOCs) for differential equations while dramatically reducing instructor workload. To do this, faculty partnered with MathWorks and used MATLAB-based tools—including MATLAB Online, MATLAB Grader, Live Editor/Live Scripts, and support from the MathWorks MOOC team—to add interactive coding examples, automated assessments, and high-quality tutorial videos.

MathWorks created 18 targeted video tutorials, helped design Live Script exercises and automated grading with MATLAB Grader, and staffed MOOC forums with expert engineers, enabling immediate student feedback and reducing manual grading. The partnership saved approximately 200 hours of video production time, improved engagement through interactive MATLAB assignments, and allowed MIT to reuse MOOC materials in on-campus courses, demonstrating measurable time savings and scalable instructional impact.

MIT

Jennifer French

Digital Learning Scientist