Online education has no similar incentive as formal education has. And one of the most important aspect of online education for me is to learn what I find interesting.
Online Education's Dirty Secret - Awful Retention
121–130 of 165 posts
Re: Online Education's Dirty Secret - Awful Retention
#122I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing. For Stanford's database class that just finished we had 64 thousand register, but only 20,000 actually do some work, and then close to 5k actually take the final or get a statement of accomplishment. My blog response: http://sef.kloninger.com/2013/03/online-ed-retention/ I'm the engineering manager on Class2Go, Stanford's open-source MOOC platform. Check it out: http://c…
I was one of those students (great course!) and you're right. So, folk sign up on the spur of the moment and then drop out! Big deal. Where’s the dirty secret? Was there any cost to signing up on the part of the student or the instructors? Not at all. Why then probe further into what would be a vast range of personal reasons for not completing the course?
We have to ask ‘Why do people make cost-free momentary decisions and then fail to act on them?’. Do we think this an important question? I suggest most of us have much better things to do with our time than agonize over this.
Re: Online Education's Dirty Secret - Awful Retention
#123(Coursera engineer here) It's great to see thoughtful critiques like this. Thankfully, we have a data analytics team now (3 out of our 17 engineers), and they are studying our retention statistics and the factors that affect it. They're also running A/B experiments to see what increases it and getting some interesting results. We do see some big advantages of the timed model for learning, particularly in classes with…
Hi, Pamela. I am a long-time user of Coursera and I love the site. I have feedback for you as regards retention of students. The number one thing is due dates and late penalties. If I sign up for a course and work through the first few weeks and get everything done, and then I miss a deadline because life happens, suddenly I am no longer able to get a 100% in the class. I do not mind getting an A- in a class if it ha…
Genuine question: why do you care so much about your grade?
Re: Online Education's Dirty Secret - Awful Retention
#124[deleted]
Re: Online Education's Dirty Secret - Awful Retention
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's an interesting and appealing description, but sounds pretty different than what Wikipedia has to say about ADD. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_deficit_disorder#se...
It sounds different, but I am simply giving more detail about what happens inside of the disorder. Any decent book written in the last decade will confirm my description. 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…
Responding to tripleeggg's dead comment.
I have a child with a diagnosis that significantly increases the risk of his failing to graduate, using drugs, becoming a convicted felon, suffering accidental death, and being unable to hold down a regular job. There is a safe medication that addresses all of those risks, with reasonably moderate side effects.
If some day you have a child in the same situation, you'll be free to try whatever unproven experimental course of action you want. But I see no point in taking such risks with my child's future.
Re: Online Education's Dirty Secret - Awful Retention
#126The issue with Coursera is the synchronous model. The material's good and the selection's excellent, and they deserve a lot of props for solving such a critical problem. College life is sanitized. Real World interjections are rare enough, at that age, to be handled case-by-case when it comes to extensions and such. Adult life is messy and complicated-- sick parents become more common, job demands fluctuate-- and sync…
I never understood why Coursera has a schedule. Let people learn at their own pace. Let them start whenever they want. Let them pause whenever they want.
Emulating old abstractions using new tech is a HUGE failure.
Re: Online Education's Dirty Secret - Awful Retention
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
You may want to rethink that. For most of the classes I have taken the lectures were very enjoyable. I like the frequent quiz breaks also. The videos have captions if you like them.
Also, the video's become much more enjoyable at 1.25x or 1.5x speed, depending on the speaker.
For the Stanford Introduction to AI course, I was at about 1.7x to 1.8x, depending on who was speaking and how fast they were talking; but I had to use a combination of pitch-shifting and non-pitch-shifting audio speedups to get that far.
Re: Online Education's Dirty Secret - Awful Retention
#128The issue with Coursera is the synchronous model. The material's good and the selection's excellent, and they deserve a lot of props for solving such a critical problem. College life is sanitized. Real World interjections are rare enough, at that age, to be handled case-by-case when it comes to extensions and such. Adult life is messy and complicated-- sick parents become more common, job demands fluctuate-- and sync…
...in our ADD culture. As someone who has personal interaction with the disorder (I'm not officially diagnosed, but probably have it, my son has it, several siblings, nieces and nephews as well), I hate this phrase. Because people use it to mean the exact opposite of what the actual disorder is. People with ADD or ADHD (different names for pretty much the same thing) do not lack focus. To the contrary, a primary char…
I have been diagnosed with ADD, and I know I can't trigger that focus, even for things I want to do. I sometimes fall into extreme focus mode, but it's usually on "accident".
Re: Online Education's Dirty Secret - Awful Retention
#129I usually sign up for a bunch of classes just so I can access the material at a later point when I have time or when I'm interested. I'm pretty sure that in most cases Coursera locks you out of old material unless you were enrolled. I don't follow along with the class. Synchronous learning, IMO, is an anachronism. We have video recording technology, practically infinite bandwidth, and near speed of light communicatio…
Exactly this. I was almost offended when the course material was taken down or that I was 'locked out'; it seemed like it went against the whole idea of the online learning initiative. Quizzes and exams, okay, but learning materials should always be accessible!
I used the database course to supplement a database course that I was taking at the same time, and it was not just a stark difference in quality but also fantastic that I could pick the pieces of material that I needed to learn better and watch those lectures at my speed and how I wanted!
It's important to me that all course materials are available at the start of the course, and until at least a year after I take the course. Otherwise give me an easy way to download the course materials as a bundle to use in the future.
Re: Online Education's Dirty Secret - Awful Retention
#130(Coursera engineer here) It's great to see thoughtful critiques like this. Thankfully, we have a data analytics team now (3 out of our 17 engineers), and they are studying our retention statistics and the factors that affect it. They're also running A/B experiments to see what increases it and getting some interesting results. We do see some big advantages of the timed model for learning, particularly in classes with…
Hi, Pamela. I am a long-time user of Coursera and I love the site. I have feedback for you as regards retention of students. The number one thing is due dates and late penalties. If I sign up for a course and work through the first few weeks and get everything done, and then I miss a deadline because life happens, suddenly I am no longer able to get a 100% in the class. I do not mind getting an A- in a class if it ha…
With work, family and everything that goes around, it is very hard to be in time...
Standford Class2go gives you half credits if you are late for all the quizzes and exercises but the final exam counted triple so you could skip a few things here and there and still work it out(you had to study them for the exams though!).
I love the fact that there is a due date, it forces me to do it and a certificate is very rewarding too (I tend to give up the courses that give me no "credits")...
I think in general,the schedule are too tight though.