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Why we need more than “learn at your own pace” online learning

blog.brainstation.io

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Re: Why we need more than “learn at your own pace” online learning

#11

Post by tombert »

I'm currently a student with SUNY Empire State College with their online program, which is semi learn-at-your-own-pace. There are deadlines on the assignments, and you have to communicate with other students in order to get the grade.

Personally, I greatly prefer it. The first statement "Learners Need to Attend to Succeed" is sort of double edged; my first try at college, I didn't attend class for a variety of reasons (mostly depression), and I know well enough that if I were required to go to a physical classroom while working full time, there's no chance I'd actually show up. By allowing me to work at home when it's most convenient for me, I actually do the assigned reading and homework.

Also, the line "Learners Need Access to Expertise" strikes me as a bit strange; do people have problems finding experts on stuff? For my online school, I can bother the professor for help whenever I need it, but I also don't have too much trouble finding someone smarter than me on IRC.

Re: Why we need more than “learn at your own pace” online learning

#12

Post by realharo »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #6
frv103 wrote: post #3

I'm not sure that course completion percentage is necessarily the best metric to be drawing conclusions from. I will often sign up for MOOCs and courses for a single talk, chapter, or topic that I'm interested in with no intention of actually completing the course. I wonder I'm an outlier in this regard or if this approach is much more common than the author of this article realizes.

These are aspirational course sign ups, and are of course similar to aspirational book purchases (where I will learn a new language through psychic connection between the desk the book is on and the my hands on the desk) and aspirational gym membership (where calories will be burnt simply because my body knows it might go to the gym and so gets all worried and sweaty anyway)

There is also the meme of having a lot of never-played games in one's Steam collection, that were purchased during sales. So it affects entertainment too.

Re: Why we need more than “learn at your own pace” online learning

#13

Post by brogrammernot »

This seems to leave out a large contributing factor, cost.

Many, many of the MOOCs I’ve ever done were free or a nominal cost ($5-20).

When you’re attending a class at a university or even a local community college you’ve put in a lot of initial work to just get into the class (applying, transcripts, student portal straight out of 1977 that makes MSDOS look pretty) compounded that at minimum you’re paying $300 for a 3 credit class before any book fees.

There’s tremendous more skin in the game for those classes than a MOOC so it’s not an apples to apples comparison.

Re: Why we need more than “learn at your own pace” online learning

#15

Post by whiddershins »

frv103 wrote: post #3

I'm not sure that course completion percentage is necessarily the best metric to be drawing conclusions from. I will often sign up for MOOCs and courses for a single talk, chapter, or topic that I'm interested in with no intention of actually completing the course. I wonder I'm an outlier in this regard or if this approach is much more common than the author of this article realizes.

I think that’s a great point.

A ways back I took 1/3 of an MIT OCW course and it was incredibly impactful.

I guess some would say I should have completed it but that can be arbitrary. I got what I felt I needed.

Re: Why we need more than “learn at your own pace” online learning

#17

Post by commandlinefan »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #4

There are two problems with "learn on your own" (more accurate than "own pace") - No-one to guide you if you misunderstand a big concept. You are just left with a lot of reading around - Time. This is why so many contractors are accused of learning on the clients time - because there is so little of your own time.

> No-one to guide you if you misunderstand a big concept.

That's partly true, but I've found that stackoverflow is actually full of people who are (surprisingly) happy to explain things and check your work when you get confused.

Re: Why we need more than “learn at your own pace” online learning

#18

Post by groovybits »

The main justification for the argument in this article is: 'Learn at your own pace is ineffective because dropout rates are high'. However, the source article [1] that references the dropout rates also questions whether dropout rates is an accurate measurement of whether this learning style is effective or not.

I'm not an expert on education, but logically, I'm thinking that effectiveness relies on an end result in the first place. That is, can you measure the effectiveness of MOOCs when the course(s) where not completed to begin with. That's like me saying that traditional in-classroom classes were in-effective because I dropped out of college. I would wager that measuring something such as hiring rate after course completion would provide a better metric.

Edit: Including the source article in question

[1] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/03/08/researchers-e...

Re: Why we need more than “learn at your own pace” online learning

#19

Post by swaggyBoatswain »

I think learning at your own pace is perfectly fine, so long as your okay with mitigating / dealing with inefficiencies of roadblocks. It depends on the topic, but I'm assuming this is towards computer science / webdevelopment in general

Online learning is cost-effective though. You can effectively specialize in anything computer-science based for less than $100 with all the free content / cheap MOOC's available. Or you could attend a live seminar / webinar etc where you can work with other people, etc. But this comes at a significantly higher cost at a faster learning rate.

Why not take the best of both worlds? It all boils down to the best value for the buck

1) Learn things online at your own pace, 2x speed, playback as necessary.

2) Take the extraordinate amount of money you would have spent elsewhere, use a fraction of the cost with hackhands / make your own ad-agency for hiring upwork specialists in issues you have. This scales indefinitely, now you always have an expert on hand and consequently, form a long term business relationship with. There's no roadblocks anymore.

3) You get on demand help onpar with in-house training / tutoring, assuming its a popular topic. For example, learning nodejs /react. There's tons of qualified tutors that will charge $1/minute from india/europe with hackhands and/or similar.

4) There's always forums and or Q/A on MOOC's who have had similar issues to you. Assuming its a popular course. Stackoverflow / reddit / etc is always available too

5) Techmeetups and my city's dev channel has lots of great people. Also, techtalks to explore different topics

Learning on your own effectively does require a small investment paying for tutors, but its significantly cheaper and arguably sometimes even more efficient than learning through a program.

I know exactly what I'm getting everytime, from the comforts of my own workarea. No wasted time driving, 2x playback speed, triple monitor setup/mechanical keyboard, on-demand tutoring within 5 minutes, etc. I don't have to worry about the instructor being subpar compared to what I can find online.

Re: Why we need more than “learn at your own pace” online learning

#20

Post by the_watcher »

> student success is directly related to student attendance. In fact, they concluded that attendance is the single most important predictor of high grades, a better predictor than SAT scores, high school GPA, study skills or study habits.

This reeks of selection bias and conflating correlation with causation to me. The abstract of the linked study does not seem to draw causal conclusions.

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