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The Online Education Revolution Drifts Off Course
11–20 of 47 posts
Re: The Online Education Revolution Drifts Off Course
#12Also, 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…
When 90% of your "students" fail to complete the courses, you have an epic failure on your hands. MOOCs are not working.
Since graduating, I've enrolled in a handful of MOOCs. I've finished less than half of these courses, but they have satisfied my curiosity and have given me something new and different to learn. I most certainly would not have paid for the experience, but I feel I'm better off because of it. I'd say this is working and far from an epic failure.
Re: The Online Education Revolution Drifts Off Course
#13If you agree that "time is money" then you can consider a MOOC completion rate equivalent to an SAAS conversion rate, in which case 4% would be pretty good[1].
I find it odd MOOC's are being held to such a high standard, when the status quo alternative is failing so hard [2].
1. https://www.quora.com/Business/What-is-a-typical-conversion-... 2. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/12/30/p...
Re: The Online Education Revolution Drifts Off Course
#14From 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 video chat or something similar to the same end? (mandatory forums do not encourage engagement amongst students).
Re: The Online Education Revolution Drifts Off Course
#15Also, 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…
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…
In other words, it works as much as you want it to work. Similar to how a "real" college experience works, with the difference being a significant financial investment.
Re: The Online Education Revolution Drifts Off Course
#16Also, 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 thing about MOOCs is that a lot of the classes are hard, really hard. This is not remedial algebra so lots of people are not going to be able to learn the material and that's fine. Why is it a failure if 90% of the students fail to complete the course? Likely 100x more students are taking and passing the class then would have otherwise done so at a traditional institution. For example, with regards to the MITX 60…
I don't think any of them are particularly hard. Most of the problem with MOOCs is that the courses just aren't engaging without classroom participation by instructors, and most of them have no penalty for failing to complete the classes. Hell, I'm pretty sure I signed up for that MIT course. Then real life got in the way, and I was spending about 60-80 hours a week trying to get a project out the door.
I think the best solution is to have students learn at their own pace using MOOCs and supplement that with teachers in classrooms. I remember that I was way behind in classes until I hit 2nd or 3rd grade, and then our teachers allowed us to work through various workbooks at our own pace. Within a couple weeks I not only had caught up to my peers, but I was outstripping them at a very fast clip. I think that a lot of really smart kids probably have similar issues... the pace of lowest common denominator teaching which dominates both public and private classrooms can cause really bright kids to be frustrated and ultimately apathetic.
There is a social aspect to schooling that causes a lot of hangups with both teachers and parents alike. Kids who are smarter than their peers have no recourse other than being pushed up grade levels, which brings about its own set of negative challenges. By creating a system where students can learn though MOOCs and have teachers who can aid them, the 3rd grader who should be learning at an 8th grade level can stay with his age group and get that social education which is ultimately just as important as the mathematical and science education.
Re: The Online Education Revolution Drifts Off Course
#17Also, 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…
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 sideline for the intellectually curious, because the market for "a sideline for the intellectually curious" isn't big enough to attract any of those things on its own. It's a niche market at best.
Higher education as a sector, on the other hand, is anything but a niche market; so if MOOCs could be positioned as The Future of Higher Education, the thing that is going to replace universities in the 21st century, that would suit their advocates' interests nicely. But the data coming out of the MOOC experiments to date make them look less and less like the sort of thing you'd want to bet your kid's future on exclusively if you had any alternatives at all, which undermines that positioning.
Re: The Online Education Revolution Drifts Off Course
#18I started 2 Coursera courses this year and completed neither. I went into them almost like a software "trial". It cost me nothing so I lost nothing. Both courses were interesting but it came down to time and opportunity cost.
Re: The Online Education Revolution Drifts Off Course
#19There is another story here. I was involved with OMI before, during and after the initial offering of the Udacity courses. I saw most of it go down.
First, it is important to understand the OMI is a school politicized through and through. Jerry Brown has deep connections to the school, having financed much of the schools on-goings and involving himself continually in the school's decision making. The school has performed alright but not as well enough, it seems, for Jerry Brown. The governor's displeasure does have some merit considering the copious resources the school possesses in areas like staffing and technology.
It appears now that the governor personally approached Udacity in hopes that they might be the solution to the school's lackluster performance. The folks at Udacity appear to me to have been genuinely naive and unfamiliar with the urban charter school world. They apparently accepted straight out what the school told them about student skill and motivation levels. So I believe they were genuinely confused when algebra repeater students turned out not have the pre-algebra skills they were supposed to possess but instead had skills often not much beyond elementary school level. I also think they were truly stumped by the student data that resulted from the school secretly asking adult student-aids to do the work for them, a commonly practiced form of cheating throughout the country in online credit-recovery courses.
Sometime after the whole Udacity experiment went south, I spoke with one of the faculty members more involved in the courses. This faculty member suggested that the Udacity representatives did realize at some point the reality of the mess into which they had allowed themselves to be led. However, also being aware of the politics of the situation and not wanting to offend the govenor, they permitted themselves to be scapegoated.
In the end, I suspect that Udacity is just happy to get back to it's original noble mission of providing free, high-quality, career-oriented online-education to the world and forget this small ill-fated diversion.
Re: The Online Education Revolution Drifts Off Course
#20Also, 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…
"Also, there is no "revolution" here" I tend to agree. Actually, I don't see much improvement over a book. I rather have a well-written book in my hand rather than having to go through so many videos. For me, the main advantage is easy and free access. Also, they make it easier to pace oneself, which is one of the hard part with self-teaching. "When 90% of your "students" fail to complete the courses, you have an epi…
> > When 90% of your "students" fail to complete the courses, you have an epic failure on your hands.
> What is the percentage of dedicated students, that have the right background to understand the material, complete the course?
What we have now is too much marketing. The reason 90% of students fail to complete the course is because 90% of them aren't really students. But the MOOC purveyors insist on calling them that despite the fact that a lot of people enroll in a course they don't have time/ability for. And people do that because there's no reason not to.