Why we need more than “learn at your own pace” online learning • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by Alex3917 » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 4:43 AM UTC

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.

Right, signing up for a MOOC is basically just a way of bookmarking it. It’s not really any different than how most people don’t buy all the stuff they add to their Pinterest boards.

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

#162

Post by eksemplar » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 4:54 AM UTC

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…

We take certifications very serious in enterprise, but it depends on what type of certification and who issues it.

I mean, I get that a swarm of developers are brushing up on sites like coursea, Udemy, threehouse or whatever, but I’ve seen a few of those courses, and a lot of the instructors really shouldn’t be teaching anyone. I’m not sure a coursea certificate would be an advantage, because the quality of coursea isn’t recognized, but on the other hand, I really don’t see how it would be a disadvantage either. If it’s all you got, I probably wouldn’t hire you, but if you’ve got a CS degree and a coursea certificate, I really don’t see why that would ever be negative.

A Microsoft or Cisco certificate on the other hand is valuable and will get you a long way though. On the organizational site, prince2 is also really valuable even though the prince2 way of doing pm is somewhat dated.

To show you just how valuable they are, we wouldn’t hire a network engineer who isn’t Cisco certified and we wouldn’t hire anyone for operations who hasn’t completed a bunch of Microsoft and Azure certificates. Unless we absolutely had to, but then we would enroll you in the courses and get you certified.

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

#163

Post by franzwong » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 5:35 AM UTC

I've taken an online natural language processing course. I've spent much time on assignment because I want to get full mark. I searched the web and learnt something extra. Due to the deadline, I missed other sessions of the course and I couldn't take it back until the next semester. Finally I've just taken a few sessions of the course.

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

#164

Post by gaius » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 7:24 AM UTC

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

Coursera will not grade the end-of-section quiz for non-paying students.

EdX grades exercises for audit students, on every course I’ve done there the free/paid experience is identical, the only difference is whether they issue a “verified certificate” at the end. Often people audit courses and only upgrade to paid once they have a passing grade.

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

#165

Post by gaius » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 7:27 AM UTC

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…

Some, including myself, take it as a slightly negative signal. I’ve seen too many paper tigers.

I take almost any MOOC as a positive signal that this candidate invests their own time in ongoing professional development, but I have encountered some who apparently learned nothing, maybe got someone else to take the tests or used a braindump site.

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

#166

Post by alexgmcm » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 7:53 AM UTC

Chathamization wrote: post #117

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.

Indeed. Also some platforms (I believe Coursera and EdX were like this last time I used them) only let you access old content if you signed up with a course when it was active. So you are incentivized to sign up for any course if you think there's a possibility that you might want to access some of the content at some point in the future. People shouldn't confuse completion rate with a particular course with a studen…

>In general I think MOOCs are doing themselves a disservice by trying to copy college courses.

I agree completely - it seems almost 'cargo cult' - they are just copying colleges assuming it will be successful rather than examining what it was that made that work for colleges and how they can adapt it to the MOOC model.

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

#167

Post by EinsDueTresFour » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 8:19 AM UTC

My comment is merely anecdotal, I guess, but I believe if I were part of this study my data point would have been considered a 'statistical anomaly'.

I am a career changer who moved from admin roles to software development. This part of my life started in 2014, when I decided to make the change. My first instinct was to get a degree, since I had never got one before, so I started an evening presential course with a local university. During the course, I often noticed that I wasn't taking much in from the lectures, so I'd come in on weekends and do my study then. I'd still attend classes, as I was always afraid I'd miss something important for the exams, but this turned out to be rarely the case. In my last year, I was already so frustrated with spending 3 hours in class each night after a day at my full time job, that I decided to completely skip my lectures altogether. Surprisingly, these were the modules where I had the best performance.

There's a lot of correlation here, but in my case I'd say that what motivated me were not the classes themselves, but the deadlines. I tried online at-your-own-pace classes before in my previous career (accounting), and they did not work at all. It was very hard to keep myself motivated. Again, the correlation here does not necessarily indicate causality -- it could be argued that the lack of motivation came from the fact that I didn't like the subject. But I still believe that what works best for my case is to have a deadline, and learning resources other than presential lectures.

TL;DR: career changer who tried learn-at-your-own-pace resources for previous career path and wasn't successful. Then tried presential lectures + self study for CS career, was moderately successful. Best results were obtained with self study + externally imposed deadlines.

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

#168

Post by alexgmcm » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 8:46 AM UTC

bcheung wrote: post #144

One of the things not mentioned, and maybe it is unique to my personality, is that I often don't like the exercises given in courses and come up with my own. If something is obvious and intuitive when hearing the concept, it is usually enough to internalize it. But if something is vague, I like to write some code and experiment with the concept to see how things interact. MOOCS too often penalize you for not doing th…

Yeah - but it's on the student to seek out those additional resources, just like it is at College for students to seek out extra textbooks, use office hours etc.

Ultimately, it just comes down to how much the student wants to learn the material and MOOC's are just another helpful tool to do so.

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

#169

Post by MaxBarraclough » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 9:15 AM UTC

stephengillie wrote: post #149

jjeaff wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking about this the other day. The idea that most people are just watching garbage on YouTube 'might' be true, and that viewing educational or technical content is an outlier, but I'm not so sure. Sure, there are countless massively popular channels with garbage pop content, but that may be due to the "general" nature of the content. The broad audience keeps it at the top of the most watched lists. I think…

Consuming irrelevant information is its own form of procrastination.

Why else would we be here?

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

#170

Post by ItsMe000001 » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 10:49 AM UTC

gaius wrote: post #164

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

Coursera will not grade the end-of-section quiz for non-paying students. EdX grades exercises for audit students, on every course I’ve done there the free/paid experience is identical, the only difference is whether they issue a “verified certificate” at the end. Often people audit courses and only upgrade to paid once they have a passing grade.

I just found the first couple of courses on edX where graded exercises are only for those who pay for a "certificate". It's all courses in a UC San Diego "MicroMasters" program around data structures and algorithms. That's all the programming exercises, more than 80% of the value of those courses for most people. Unfortunately I found the quality not worth the price, and I would say that is true even for beginners (I have a CS degree from 20 years ago and only watched to remember a few things I forgot, just for fun).

Anyway, I think this might be a sign for the things to come. A lot(!) of edX courses, despite being okay or even good, have very low participation judging by forum activity. I think the course makers at the universities are going to feel more and more pressure from money-counting management about cost/benefit for the institution.

It's sad that to me to see that everyone does their own (often inadequate) little course instead of working together to create something bigger, better. I would like to see platforms like edX and Coursera not as market places like Ebay for lots of still very traditional little courses, but as platforms that encourage jointly working on something better (in addition to the current model, not as total replacement). Of course, 90% of why they don't (can't) do or become that is that those making the courses won/t or can't do it. Everybody works in isolation on their own small course(s).