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The Online Education Revolution Drifts Off Course

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21–30 of 47 posts

Re: The Online Education Revolution Drifts Off Course

#21
The continual focus on completion rates is rather misguided. Like others here, I have taken many a MOOC, and consider the experience useful and successful. I have also never completed a single MOOC, doing little of the homework in most cases. I have no use for more pieces of papers, and really no time to do homework, but I get what I want, which is an overview of a subject area and some entertainment while doing the chores. Learning about behavioural economics from Dan Ariely's course was one of the most useful things I did in 2013, and I am independently learning more about the field.

Obviously there are issues the MOOC providers need to resolve. It's not clear how they will make money, and if they really want to go the volume model they probably need to lower the level of the courses offered -- more Udemy than Udacity -- or offer some kind of recognised accreditation so that students can justify devoting the time required to really learn material. In the language of startups, with which I'm sure we're all familiar, they haven't found product-market fit. It may be the case that people like me are not considered useful by MOOC providers -- I'm unlikely to ever give them money. That's fair enough and I have no problem with it.

I find articles like the one linked rather annoying. It's clear that MOOCs are a thing, and what we really need is discussion of how they're going to integrate with the educational landscape, not sniping from the sidelines. In this case it's ok, as it's a journalistic organisation reporting on what happened. However I read the same thing from academics, which is a real shame. Many seem to get joy from the failures of MOOCs, no doubt because they see them as a threat to their livelihood. I'd rather see some engagement with the issue.

Re: The Online Education Revolution Drifts Off Course

#22

From the perspective of someone in the education space (the physical kind of education involving classrooms and face-to-face conversations), human contact is essential in education. My favorite classes from college were taught by interesting people whose personality and real-world insight gave me a far greater appreciation of the subject than what I could glean from an online video. However, this face-to-face interac…

I'm currently enrolled in an online degree program at the University of Illinois, and while the teachers are good and the material is interesting and challenging, the class is fundamentally less engaging. The closest analogue I can think of is the difference between IM and a video chat. Many conventional college students use study groups to boost their success rates. What is preventing an online course from using vid…

I agree with lack of interaction with MOOCs. I enrolled in three courses on Coursera and dropped out from two of them.

The only one I completed, the instructor was engaging and interactive in the sense, he didn't show just the slides and read, he interacted with the slide. By the time, he finished the video, the slides were all written over in his handwriting.

The one course I dropped because instructor was reading the slides in the videos. I can read slides faster myself, I don't need to watch a lengthy video and listen instructor read the slides.

The second course dropped because instructor wasn't very good at explaining things. He will just show the slides but then ramble on. Though expert in his field, I got the impression that he wasn't a good teacher. Teaching is an art and not necessarily every expert can teach.

The MOOCs need to be engaging, not just the topic wise but also instructor wise.

Re: The Online Education Revolution Drifts Off Course

#23

Also, there is no "revolution" here. That's just hype, both from the media and the companies. MOOCs would have existed decades ago, but the cost of distribution of the content was high. With the arrival of YouTube and cheap content delivery networks including Amazon's, MOOCs suddenly eliminated the distribution problem. But it turns out that wasn't enough. When 90% of your "students" fail to complete the courses, you…

The MOOCs may have some business challenges with a 90% failure rate, assuming they intend to make money from graduates, but it is no indication of problems with the service from an end-user perspective.

I've signed up for a few courses now with no intent of using them as a school, just as supplemental material to augment my own personal learning venture. I don't really care about the tests or homework prescribed by the service, and I certainly don't care about any kind of certificate of completion.

I don't consider my usage habits a failure though. In each case I came away with what I had hoped to learn when signing up.

Re: The Online Education Revolution Drifts Off Course

#24

The continual focus on completion rates is rather misguided. Like others here, I have taken many a MOOC, and consider the experience useful and successful. I have also never completed a single MOOC, doing little of the homework in most cases. I have no use for more pieces of papers, and really no time to do homework, but I get what I want, which is an overview of a subject area and some entertainment while doing the…

I get the same value out of MOOC providers (more Coursera than Udacity to be honest), and find it fantastic to be able to learn about something without any financial obligation.

Also would like to see how they are going to survive financially, and if the universities will keep supporting them.

Re: The Online Education Revolution Drifts Off Course

#25

From the perspective of someone in the education space (the physical kind of education involving classrooms and face-to-face conversations), human contact is essential in education. My favorite classes from college were taught by interesting people whose personality and real-world insight gave me a far greater appreciation of the subject than what I could glean from an online video. However, this face-to-face interac…

However, everyone learns differently. I have found greater success in learning without that kind of interaction. Such contact may be essential for a subset of students, but certainly not all. I find the potential of MOOCs exciting because it finally moves us away from believing the one-size-fits-all model serves all students equally.

The future of education is probably not MOOCs alone, or brick and mortar schools alone. The future is allowing students to learn however they want to learn without barriers. That will truly be transformative.

Re: The Online Education Revolution Drifts Off Course

#26
Look at it from this way:

I couldn't expect to have access to courses like Probabilistic Graphical Models and Neural Networks by Hinton at probably any of the universities in my country. By popularizing science, by being able to reach such a massive population, even if it inspires a 1% of those taking the course, it is absolutely better than Hinton or Kohler teaching a course to 50 - 250 students at UoT and Stanford per semester.

This is long term we are talking about. Yes, the whole thing must be sustained by business, but I find a moral objective too here.

Re: The Online Education Revolution Drifts Off Course

#27

The continual focus on completion rates is rather misguided. Like others here, I have taken many a MOOC, and consider the experience useful and successful. I have also never completed a single MOOC, doing little of the homework in most cases. I have no use for more pieces of papers, and really no time to do homework, but I get what I want, which is an overview of a subject area and some entertainment while doing the…

I feel the same way about MOOCs and I suspect most of the audience does.

I'm curious why these organizations are pushing a sort of virtual class model at all. Wouldn't it be more useful to provide lecture series on topics alone? Perhaps add some social interaction but in a way more fitting of the medium.

Right now, I went to investigate your behavioral economics class and found that I wasn't able to view the lectures until some time in the future. Why hobble themselves and their users? Is it about a monetization model they envision in the future?

It's quite frustrating because there is some real value here. I'd love for MOOCs to start making big institutions sweat just a little.

Re: The Online Education Revolution Drifts Off Course

#28

The continual focus on completion rates is rather misguided. Like others here, I have taken many a MOOC, and consider the experience useful and successful. I have also never completed a single MOOC, doing little of the homework in most cases. I have no use for more pieces of papers, and really no time to do homework, but I get what I want, which is an overview of a subject area and some entertainment while doing the…

Indeed, the relevant number is not (students who complete) / (students who sign up). A better number to look at is (students who complete) / (cost of class) - i.e., an actual benefit/cost ratio. (It's not the best number, since it ignores the value gained by students who partially complete.)

If I pay $2,000 and have a 4% chance of completion, that sucks. If I pay $0 and have a 4% chance of completion, that's pure win.

Re: The Online Education Revolution Drifts Off Course

#30
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When 90% of your "students" fail to complete the courses, you have an epic failure on your hands. MOOCs are not working. I completed every course I signed up for when I was going to university. Completion percentage was important because I was, and still am, paying to be there. As a result, I enrolled in very little that I was simply curious about. Virtually every class I took was a step toward a degree. Since gradua…

It starts to look a little different when you see people trumpeting MOOCs as "the future of higher education," though. The thing about MOOCs is that to attract funding, media attention, and participation from big-name universities and top teaching talent -- all the things you'd desperately want to have if you were the one pitching them, in other words -- they really need MOOCs to work as something bigger than just a…

For people fully devoted to studying, and with some sort of extrinsic incentive to complete the courses, I imagine that the completion rate would be significantly higher. When I was at MIT, some of the courses worked almost exactly like MOOCs do now, and just as many people completed those as the traditional courses.

With MOOCs, a ton of the takers are not full-time students. I've taken some MOOC courses and only completed one (probabilistic graphical models). The main reason is that I have much higher priorities now, and the courses are on a strict schedule. The first time there's a choice between getting a piece of code finished that I need for a business deal done and finishing a problem set, that problem set is not getting finished.

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