Online Education's Dirty Secret - Awful Retention

You can. But you wont.

The sad fact is that deadline motivate people. Without having deadlines and structure coursera would have gone nowhere.

I've tried pretty much all of the "MOOC's" out there, and so far the only two I've stuck with were Codecademy and Udacity. Why? Precisely for the reasons that are mentioned at the article which started this discussion. The format of Edx and Coursera is just all wrong for most people who DO want to learn something but have a busy life that is not conducive to a traditional college class.

Besides which, all too often, Coursera and Edx just throw a college class online (lectures, course notes, homeworks, quizzes, and tests) and call it a day. Then they have arbitrary deadlines--which I acknowledge might help some people but the first time I got a deadline email I decided that it wasn't for me...no matter how interested I was in the class topic. I'm already married and a father who is working part-time while doing a Master's program in Computer Science. So I don't have huge chunks of time available for traditional course work (in addition to my Master's coursework). I have little bits of time every day which I use effectively to progress through the Codecademy and Udacity coursework. Slowly but steadily I'm getting through both and making substantial progress.

But, since Coursera and Edx require huge blocks of time committed every week, and a tight timeline to complete the course, I just don't find it's workable. Which is sad since they seem to offer some tremendous material.

In short, I think that Coursera and Edx (and probably colleges in general) should learn a thing or two from the highly modularized approach of Udacity and Codecademy.

I find that my learning retention and interest remains much higher with both Udacity and Codecademy because they present a little material (little bite-size chunks) which slowly build into more and more challenging material and intersperse "challenges" or "quizzes" throughout--rather than the traditional approach which--by necessity--was far less responsive.

The fact is that online learning doesn't just reach potentially numerous people that wouldn't have otherwise been exposed to such educational opportunities at such a low price (currently free), it potentially allows for a radical rethinking of the traditional education model.

I think that it is sheer ignorance to say, as some have in the comments I've read (and as--apparently--Coursera maintains), that those who don't finish a course just aren't interested enough or motivated enough. This is ridiculous. The very same (allegedly "unmotivated" or "undisciplined" or "uninterested") people may be successfully working their way through Codecademy or Udacity. And yes, it may take them a while, but eventually they'll complete a Codecademy "track" or a Udacity course. And they'll do it one bite-size chunk at a time...and sometimes, say on a weekend, they'll plow through a whole bunch of bite-sized chunks.

When Coursera and Edx adopt a more bite-sized format which isn't oriented around arbitrary deadlines, I'll check them out again. Until then I'll stick with Codeacademy and Udacity.

Bottom-line: the standard model is broken. Lectures and homeworks and quizzes and tests are poor ways to educate. For many years they were the best we could do within the technological constraints we faced. But now we can do better. Heck, I'd encourage everyone working the bleeding edge of online education to think "outside the box" and try new approaches. While the best new approaches I've seen have been those utilized by Udacity and Codecademy, that's not to say that there aren't even better methods--methods better at retaining learners (keeping learners engaged), AND methods which excel at increasing retention of material.

People with ADHD or ADD don't have executive control of what they will focus on. Inability to focus on what you're told to focus on is noticed in most environments as not listening to instructions, inability to stay on assigned task, poor attention to detail if you do stay on assigned task, etc. Everything in that link you posted is covered. In most environments your excellent focus on things you're NOT "supposed" to be doing is not likely to be noticed. Or if it is noticed, it likely increases frustration over the inability to pay attention to assigned tasks.

Speaking personally, I was very confused when screening for ADHD was recommended for my son. He seemed to have excellent focus - at 3 he would often get involved in a detailed task for half an hour or more, at 5 he would sit quietly through a full length documentary, then demonstrate how much he had learned for days afterwards. It was not until my sister explained from her experience that this was, in fact, characteristic that I became less resistant to having him screened.

I was also resistant to medicating him because I'd absorbed all of the usual biases about how overmedicating leads to drug abuse. However after being pointed to the statistics for ADHD, medication became a no-brainer. Children with ADHD do not become addicted to their medication, and have the same risks of drug abuse as the general population. By contrast ADHD people who are not treated are at massively increased risk for all kinds of drug abuse, including both prescription drug abuse and cocaine. (Cocaine is an interesting one since it actually is an effective ADHD medication! Though inconvenient, illegal, and subject to abuse.)

Therefore popular wisdom is exactly backwards - appropriate medication for ADHD reduces the odds of drug abuse later in life.

Personally, I've signed up for dozens of Coursera courses but I've only completed one (Game Theory). It's not necessarily that the other courses were lacking the ability to keep me enrolled, but rather I never planned to try at them. I sign up to most classes to see the videos and get surface-level understanding of a subject.