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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

#31

Post by swaggyBoatswain »

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 do this all the time as well, I audit the entire course quickly to see what gaps of information I don't know. Or search out a specific topic only, on something I struggle with

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

#32

Post by swaggyBoatswain »

MrEfficiency wrote: post #22
scarface74 wrote: post #2

I've learned everything I know for the last 20+ years after graduating from college at my own pace. I'm sure that's true for most developers.

When you have a project, you learn by necessity. When you are taking a course to expand your abilities, you learn voluntarily. I find learning via projects is the fastest and most useful. I am unsure if I will take courses ever again.

I have a project, but I take courses to expand the abilities to which I need for that project

For every project I do, I will have many shitty project follow alongs from MOOC's

Its far more efficient I learn the big picture in the shallowest way possible, than deep dive into a project

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

#33

Post by heurist »

I don't think MOOCS are the solution unless utilized in schools. The role of a school teacher working along with a MOOC would be more motivational and disciplinary, which is what most teachers seem to specialize in anyway. Separate the content from the distribution. Only problem is when every student is learning exactly the same things and having no room for thinking out of the box, but again that pretty much already happens...

Maybe even let studebs choose their own MOOCs from a list so that their education is mostly based in interest and is self guided?

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

#34

Post by adamnemecek »

The main problem is that most people taking these courses also have a “main” thing going on (job or school) and can’t dedicate 100 percent to self education. If self education was considered a legitimate third option besides job and school, the opinions would be different.

I’ve spent the last two years self educating myself (in addition to working on something). I’ve never felt so intellectually engaged and just idk alive? All the hard shit that you might struggle with becomes trivial if you spend a little more time on it.

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

#35

Post by dannykwells »

I actually think there are some new models emerging that will help address this - Springboard, for example, has learn at your own pace, but students also have a mentor assigned to them who helps with accountability and goal setting. From my experience the completion rate is substantially higher and students actually learn the skill set. Insight and other data science accelerators are opening up things like this too.

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

#36

Post by hackermailman »

The most interesting self-learning platform I've found is expii.com created by Poh-Shen Lo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Po-Shen_Loh It feeds you exercises and judging by your answers determines if you need more practice or not using an Elo rating system https://v1.expii.com/grandmaster though I get the argument of having students pay for certs ergo they actually complete the courses, this other method seems to me to work just as well as paid motivation.

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

#37

Post by DrNuke »

MOOCs are great but a more experienced tutor is however needed for a nudge, fruitful exchange of ideas and testing progress. The subtle aspect of freeriding linked to not giving too much importance is maybe true for younger or wealthy people, but everything works like that in life as well: you only care and put the effort if you have an inner motivation.

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

#38

Post by swiley »

hackermailman wrote: post #36

The most interesting self-learning platform I've found is expii.com created by Poh-Shen Lo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Po-Shen_Loh It feeds you exercises and judging by your answers determines if you need more practice or not using an Elo rating system https://v1.expii.com/grandmaster though I get the argument of having students pay for certs ergo they actually complete the courses, this other method seems to me to…

That link crashes firefox.

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

#39

Post by dunpeal »

onemoresoop wrote: post #28
dunpeal wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No-one to guide you if you misunderstand a big concept. You are just left with a lot of reading around. Good MOOCs have tests to ensure that doesn't happen. This is in fact how you solve this problem in all large courses, even those taking place in actual physical universities. > Time. That doesn't make any sense. MOOCs require minimal time investment, and are the most flexible. Are you saying that being forced to…

I think that should certainly help procrastinators. When there's also some human interaction, fixed schedule, the cost, the incentive to finish up the course is higher, even if you hate the course...

I agree with all that. I just disagreed with GP's claims.

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

#40

Post by soneca »

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 agree that course completion might be a very flawed metric.

I made a career transition to software development and the resource that had the most impact, by far, in my learning was freeCodeCamp.

At the time FCC had only 3 certificates (now is 6 I guess), but I only completed the first one - Frontend.

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