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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

#51

Post by scarface74 »

thinkmassive wrote: post #30
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’m taking two courses on Coursera right now but only paid for a certificate in one. I plan to view all content from the other course, however Coursera will not grade the end-of-section quiz for non-paying students. It seems the only way to “complete” a Coursera course is to pay $50 so the assignments will be graded. At least this is the case for: https://www.coursera.org/learn/battery-management-systems

What’s the purpose of the actual certificate? As someone who has done dozens of interviews - I’m not a manager, but for about two years I was responsible for hiring and I’ve sat as part of a panel- most people don’t take most certificates seriously. Some, including myself, take it as a slightly negative signal. I’ve seen too many paper tigers.

But then again, except for entry level positions, few hiring managers care about any formal education for IT positions.

From what I can gather, the few certificates that companies care about are RedHat, Cisco, and AWS certs. I’m sure there are a few more that are outside of my area of expertise.

I went through the Microsoft Architect Certification track as a commitment device to force me to study, but I didn’t put it on my resume and never told my employer. But I was trying to transition from a C/C++ bit twiddler to an “Enterprise Developer”.

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

#52

Post by jessewmc »

dibstern wrote: post #46

I am highly skeptical of the research that shows low attendance causes poor grades. I attended 2/24 lectures for one subject, and I got the highest grade for the year, out of both semesters. And I have friends who don’t attend lectures often and do similar. We focus on assignments - programming & software engineering assignments eat far too much time to get top marks and still attend classes. When I finish assignment…

This is classic anecdotal thinking. Your statement is equivalent to someone who has smoked a pack a day for 40 years saying they don't think cigarettes cause lung cancer because they don't have lung cancer.

Not that this particular study is necessarily convincing -- but your anecdote has no value in determining if it is or isn't.

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

#53

Post by bluGill »

nemo44x wrote: post #43

For "learn at your own pace" trainings, the key to ensuring people take the entire thing and do the labs is to make each training "course" very small and consumable in a short period of time. Have it focus on a specific thing someone would want to do within the domain of the greater problem. This lets people pick and choose which isolated topics (can have pre-req's) they need to take and because they can learn the ta…

While your point is valid, the counter is there are some difficult things that would never be done. Some problems are hard or take a long time.

"War and Peace" is not a book you can study as a single short task. Breaking it down doesn't work because every class assumes you have read it recently and done the previous class - we would end up with thousands of people who complete just one or two classes and very few who complete the entire sequence. If completion is the goal we would still fail. Maybe you can call some units optional, but the value requires you to complete most of the sequence.

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

#54

Post by fredsir »

scarface74 wrote: post #42
MrEfficiency wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 never learn voluntarily. Anything I learn is either for my current job, or the next job I’m looking to get - whether I am actively looking or not. For instance, I’m not going to learn the intricacies of Rust to scratch an itch if I see that there are no jobs for it. Does that make me mercenary and show a lack of “passion”? Probably.

> I never learn voluntarily

Are there nothing you do out of passion? I'm sure there is. You got any hobbies? I'm sure you learn about that voluntarily.

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

#55

Post by madcaptenor »

heurist wrote: post #33

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…

So basically the MOOC plays the role of the textbook.

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

#56

Post by maxxxxx »

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 find learning via projects is the fastest and most useful. I am unsure if I will take courses ever again. "

I also learn mostly through projects but I think sometimes it's good to take a dedicated class to expand my horizon further than the immediate need or just into a completely new area.

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

#57

Post by boojums »

scarface74 wrote: post #51
thinkmassive wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m taking two courses on Coursera right now but only paid for a certificate in one. I plan to view all content from the other course, however Coursera will not grade the end-of-section quiz for non-paying students. It seems the only way to “complete” a Coursera course is to pay $50 so the assignments will be graded. At least this is the case for: https://www.coursera.org/learn/battery-management-systems

What’s the purpose of the actual certificate? As someone who has done dozens of interviews - I’m not a manager, but for about two years I was responsible for hiring and I’ve sat as part of a panel- most people don’t take most certificates seriously. Some, including myself, take it as a slightly negative signal. I’ve seen too many paper tigers. But then again, except for entry level positions, few hiring managers care…

If you don't mind me asking, why did you want to change from bit twiddling to enterprise?

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

#58

Post by augbog »

I feel this article doesn't understand what "learning at your own pace" means.

Yeah sure you can say "learners need this environment, this attendance, etc" but you're falling into the trap of what we have right now -- we think we know what's best for people to learn.

And while true for many people they definitely WILL learn with established practices, not everyone will learn as well as they could.

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

#59

Post by anonymous5133 »

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.

Course completion metric is one of the worst metric to use to evaluate online courses/MOOCs. It is quite obvious that for other forms of traditional there is an investment that is being made by the student so of course they are encouraged to keep going. People spending money on something is a signal that they are highly motivated to take the course.

For MOOCs, there are very few entry requirements so of course you can going to get low completion rate because lots of people are just "window shopping" so to speak.

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

#60

Post by philipov »

vezycash wrote: post #44
nicodjimenez wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great point, courses are way too long. If a course could be completed in a day you'd have high completion rates.

For me, it's the length of individual videos that matter. I prefer those with 4-7 minutes minutes per video. I've noticed that many long videos can be much shorter with minimal editing to remove unnecessary pauses, uhmms...

I'm the opposite. When searching for lectures on youtube, I filter to remove anything shorter than 20 minutes and then ignore anything that's still under an hour.
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