The massive open online course (MOOC) that seemed to be a promising and revolutionary concept that gives free online courses showed disappointing results, according to a report by The New York Times.

A study by the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education found that only about half of those who registered in MOOC classes watched an online lecture, and only about 4 percent completed the courses, the report said.

In its first two years, Sebastian Thrun, a Stanford professor, drew 160,000 students worldwide to register in a free online course on artificial intelligence course. This was seen as a revolution in higher learning that is primarily designed to give free lessons to poor students in developing countries. All the students need is access to a computer.

However, results of recent studies show low rates of course completion and majority of those who enrolled in MOOC's online courses already had earned degrees. Thrun was very unhappy with the results and hope to increase the completion rates of MOOCs students. He plans to increase the number of online mentors to keep students in check.

"It's like, 'The MOOC is dead, long live the MOOC,' " Jonathan Rees, a Colorado State University-Pueblo professor who has expressed fears that the online courses would displace professors and be an excuse for cuts in funding, told The New York Times. "At the beginning everybody talked about MOOCs being entirely online, but now we're seeing lots of things that fall in the middle, and even I see the appeal of that."

In some of MOOCs pilot classes of 100, students failed despite access to mentors. In an algebra class, for example, very few students received a passing grade and only 12 percent of which are high school students.

"Sebastian Thrun put himself out there as a little bit of a lightning rod," George Siemens, a MOOC pioneer who got funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for research on MOOCs, told The New York Times. "Whether he intended it or not, that article marks a substantial turning point in the conversation around MOOCs."

Last week Siemens convened the researchers at the University of Texas at Arlington to discuss their early results.