Episode 11 with Karen Francis

Guest Karen Francis shares details about CourseTalk.com, the world's largest source for student reviews of online courses and MOOCs. Karen serves as Executive Chairman of AcademixDirect, which acquired CourseTalk in 2013. Karen describes how CourseTalk is like “Yelp” because of the student reviews, which help people understand what a course is really like. She stresses the importance of taking a moment to ask yourself, “What is my goal?” before selecting an online course to take. In this episode, you will hear Karen’s thoughts about “completion rates” as they relate to MOOCs, and find out which providers have the most popular course ratings on CourseTalk. Karen is a first-generation college student who attended Dartmouth and Harvard Business School, later served on Dartmouth's Board of Trustees, and now works with online and for-profit educators in addition to more traditional schools; as such, she has insight into just about every corner of the education industry.