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List of the Most Popular MOOCs

onlinecoursereport.com

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Re: List of the Most Popular MOOCs

#71

Post by brudgers »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #30
jfaucett wrote: post #7

Im Noticing a lot of these courses are coursera, and one of the most frustrating things about the plattform is the fact that most courses close and access to course materials/videos etc. is revoked after the course is over, this destroys the whole point of a mooc for me, and this choice seems arbitrary. Why cant education materials just be open and remain open to everyone, journals and textbooks included? There are e…

I agree. Coursera's approach seems to capture the worst of both worlds of traditional and online ed. It lacks the live lecture and person-to-person contact of a traditional college course. Yet, it maintains the timeboxed approach of traditional ed, which exists chiefly to provide simultaneity, to scale real-life human contact to lecture-hall size. Now I realize that some aspects of the way some courses are run requir…

I've taken a number of Coursera courses. The format works better for some courses than others. The key is that there is a recognizable student cohort and that the students are enthusiastically engaged in live discussions. That tends to happen less in the fifth offering when the primary instructor has moved on to other things.

Anyway, there's pedagogical theory that favors time boxing [and some that doesn't]. Coursera is opinionated in the matter. That's not a controversial opinion in higher education circles upon which Coursera styles itself and from which it draws it's educators.

Re: List of the Most Popular MOOCs

#72

Post by hyperknot »

jfaucett wrote: post #7

Im Noticing a lot of these courses are coursera, and one of the most frustrating things about the plattform is the fact that most courses close and access to course materials/videos etc. is revoked after the course is over, this destroys the whole point of a mooc for me, and this choice seems arbitrary. Why cant education materials just be open and remain open to everyone, journals and textbooks included? There are e…

I believe that Coursera courses are popular exactly because they only allow watching archives if you have signed up before. What I mean is people sign up to a large number of courses, just for being able to view the course any time in the future.

This also means that Coursera courses have naturally the highest "total enrollment" numbers, even though probably only a few percent of the students are actually taking the class.

Re: List of the Most Popular MOOCs

#73

Post by brudgers »

gloves wrote: post #62

I wonder how many of these were actually completed... Enrolment would be an empty number to me, completion would be the mark of quality.

It's lower, but still orders of magnitude greater than complete the equivalent bricks and mortar course. If 1% complete the Android course that's 50 years worth of two classes of 30 students a year. At 10% it would take Adam Porter 500 years.

The thing about MOOC's is that scale is staggering.

Re: List of the Most Popular MOOCs

#74

Post by repsilat »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #30
jfaucett wrote: post #7

Im Noticing a lot of these courses are coursera, and one of the most frustrating things about the plattform is the fact that most courses close and access to course materials/videos etc. is revoked after the course is over, this destroys the whole point of a mooc for me, and this choice seems arbitrary. Why cant education materials just be open and remain open to everyone, journals and textbooks included? There are e…

I agree. Coursera's approach seems to capture the worst of both worlds of traditional and online ed. It lacks the live lecture and person-to-person contact of a traditional college course. Yet, it maintains the timeboxed approach of traditional ed, which exists chiefly to provide simultaneity, to scale real-life human contact to lecture-hall size. Now I realize that some aspects of the way some courses are run requir…

> ... worst of both worlds ... timeboxed approach

Just to provide the other side of the story, I've done about a dozen MOOCs (mostly through Coursera) and I'm most of the way through Georgia Tech's online masters program.

Having to make progress every week is contributes a lot to me actually finishing these courses. The Udacity courses I've signed up for never get touched because there's no urgency. Ditto the textbooks on my shelf that I keep meaning to go through, and the Open Yale and MIT OCW courses I've bookmarked... I obviously have the time, but unless there's a threat of "Do it now or it's gone" I'll probably go and watch TV when I get home from work.

Re: List of the Most Popular MOOCs

#75

Post by brudgers »

VLM wrote: post #28
dagw wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a huge MOOC fan, but after completing a couple of the very early Stanford ones I haven't completed any. Quite frankly I don't see completing a MOOC as the best use of time. I use MOOCs to either pick up new skills I need for work, brush up on stuff I haven't looked at since University or as 'entertainment', basically learning interesting stuff purely for fun. For non of these things actually completing the course…

I would agree with and extend your remarks that getting a title of nobility from a brick and mortar uni gives you a vocational meal ticket, so you can motivate grinders by asking if they like money of if they like eating food, and then they'll grind away for letters on a transcript. But in MOOC land I get nothing. I did the complete automata class mostly to see if there's much new since I did a brick and mortar versi…

I completed a bunch of MOOC's. I've also worked on a bunch and not completed them while still learning. At some point, the learning took precedence and that's fine. I am profoundly grateful that there are free courses at the other end of the internet and feel lucky to have lived to seen the time in which it happened.

Re: List of the Most Popular MOOCs

#76

Post by mathgeek »

chris_wot wrote: post #47
spacehome wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since 2 = e ^ ln 2, use the identity: 2^x = (e^(ln 2))^x = e ^ (x * ln 2)

Yeah, I get that bit, it's the next part I always get confused by. I'm sure I'll get it in the end. :-)

If you haven't yet, watch the Khan Academy videos on the chain rule. Then use the related practice questions until you've mastered them. That's how I got the concepts drilled into my head for almost all of Calculus I and II.

Re: List of the Most Popular MOOCs

#77

Post by ghaff »

VLM wrote: post #45
ghaff wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not clear what you're looking for exactly but, if anything, MOOCs (Coursera at any rate) have cut back on issuing completion certificates in the absence of paying a fee. Their problem, one of them anyway, is that certificates basically aren't worth anything as a certification mechanism in most cases so very few are willing to pay for them. And, I expect, that if you start from the assumptions that 1.) MOOC certi…

I know that's the conventional top down narrative and I think you presented it well. I'm proposing that as a bottom up narrative, they continue to include extensive grind barriers such as peculiar scheduling and pacing, someone else designing arbitrary barriers in terms of assignments with firm due dates, etc. Yet the reward has been cut out as per reasons in the top down narrative, etc. So from the bottom up perspec…

Maybe. I'd just say though that one person's "designing arbitrary barriers in terms of assignments with firm due dates, etc." is another's structured approach to learning. After all, there are plenty of learning opportunities if you want total flexibility.

Of course, as you suggest, there are potentially ways to gamify and provide incentives for learning that don't as closely mimic traditional course structures.

Re: List of the Most Popular MOOCs

#78

Post by Pamar »

Symmetry wrote: post #68
jskonhovd wrote: post #65

I typically hate ranking lists like this, since I believe student completion rates are more important than enrollment. However, I did find some joy in finding a new MOOC I could add to the backlog of courses I need to take.

I'm not sure why you'd worry about completion rates. When I've taken online courses I've completed all the lectures and their associated exercises. But if I'm taking a course it means I have some end in mind for the skills it teaches me and that makes any final project or exam superfluous.

I have to disagree: for me the final project was important to immediately put to the test the things I had learned. And - as I explained above - if the course has peer-grading (almost a given if it has a final project, because you cannot automate the evaluation of a project) you learn even more by evaluating the ways other approached their solution.

Re: List of the Most Popular MOOCs

#79

Post by kailuowang »

I found it very interesting that the second most popular Mooc of all time is a philosophy course.

Although personally I like better the philosophy introduction offered by MIT:

https://courses.edx.org/courses/MITx/24.00_1x/3T2014/info

I am also looking forward to this one https://www.edx.org/course/philosophy-minds-machines-mitx-24...

> An introduction to philosophy of mind, exploring consciousness, reality, AI, and more. The most in-depth philosophy course available online.

> What you will learn

The basics of argumentation

Some central arguments for and against the view that a sufficiently powerful computer can think (AI)

The main theories of mental states and their relations to physical states

Some central arguments for and against the view that the world is not as we perceive it to be

What the "hard problem of consciousness" is

Re: List of the Most Popular MOOCs

#80

Post by chris_wot »

mathgeek wrote: post #76
chris_wot wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I get that bit, it's the next part I always get confused by. I'm sure I'll get it in the end. :-)

If you haven't yet, watch the Khan Academy videos on the chain rule. Then use the related practice questions until you've mastered them. That's how I got the concepts drilled into my head for almost all of Calculus I and II.

That's kind of where I was getting confused :( I'm having a read of Better Explained at the moment:

http://betterexplained.com/articles/derivatives-product-powe...

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