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MIT and Harvard agree to transfer edX to ed-tech firm 2U

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Re: MIT and Harvard agree to transfer edX to ed-tech firm 2U

#141

Post by squeaky-clean »

wodenokoto wrote: post #33
benrbray wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to use edX for the first time recently to take a "food science" course, but was disappointed to see that they've resorted to the same dark patterns as Coursera and others, such as: * Removing your access to course materials when the class is done, and disallowing access to past versions of the class. * Pressuring you into joining as many courses as possible, due to fear of missing out. When you visit the site…

> Breaking courses into useless 2-minute chunks and constant unhelpful quizzes. I really just want to hear the lecturer speak for 20-30 minutes at a time uninterrupted, especially if I'm listening while doing dishes etc. I disagree. If you’re doing dishes you are not taking a college level course. One of the best things about digital courses is that you don’t have to spend an hour zoning out to a professor talking an…

What works best for me is to watch the lecture multiple times with different amounts of intensity/focus. Listening to a lecture while on a walk or doing other errands is a fantastic primer for when I rewind the lecture and watch it again with my pen and notebook in front of me.

I picked this up from Mortimer J. Adler's "How to Read a Book". There's lots of other techniques discussed in it, but the idea of "skim the content first to know what's coming up, so you have an idea of what each chapter (or lecture) is building towards" improved my retention massively and works well for things that aren't just books.

Re: MIT and Harvard agree to transfer edX to ed-tech firm 2U

#142

Post by jhbadger »

benrbray wrote: post #60
itsoktocry wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sometimes I like to listen to a lecture 2 or 3 or even more times. YouTube has a ton of lectures, for free, that you can view and/or listen to in this manner. But doing dishes during a lecture seems antithetical to what they are trying to achieve with remote learning, and isn't the use case they should be catering to.

It's not really catering to disable a feature. You can call it "audit" mode and offer no credential.

The problem with "audit" mode is that it is more than just not getting a credential (which I like most people who already have their educations don't need) but that often you can't take the online exams either. I still want to know if I've learned the material properly!

Re: MIT and Harvard agree to transfer edX to ed-tech firm 2U

#143

Post by kerkeslager »

kerkeslager wrote: post #101
hatware wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> education endeavours eventually turn for-profit and then the goals get misaligned. There are companies trying to battle the problems that come with a single bottom line, like Guild Education.

I just cannot fathom the worldview that leads one to believe a for-profit company can solve the problem of for-profit education.

My previous post was a bit too glib, so here's an explanation:

There's a common belief on Hacker News which verges on mental illness, that the best solution to any problem is free market capitalism. This belief is false because free market capitalism doesn't solve problems when the customer isn't the person with the problem.

The problem in this case is a chicken-and-egg problem: it's hard to get money without an education, and it's hard to get an education without money.

For-profit education cannot solve the problem, because for-profit education is the problem. If the customer is the student, then that means people without money can't be students. If you start letting people without money be students, then the customer is someone else, and the customer's incentives will always be misaligned with the student's interests in some ways. There simply isn't a way to fix this which makes any sense and still includes for-profit education.

Re: MIT and Harvard agree to transfer edX to ed-tech firm 2U

#144

Post by Arun2009 »

kobiguru wrote: post #36

I am so happy that NPTEL NOC[1] and NPTEl Lectures [2] and Swayam[3] exists. These are indian government funded Moocs on almost everything engineering [1] https://nptel.ac.in/noc/noc_course.html [2] https://nptel.ac.in/course.html [3] https://swayam.gov.in/explorer

I have surveyed these, but in general, they simply don't come anywhere close in quality to that of courses offered by edX.

An example that readily comes to mind are the courses on manufacturing processes offered by both MITx and NPTEL. The MITx course was clearly a class apart - you actually got to see the processes in question and how they were applied in the real world factories. When speaking about how a product was made, the lecturer actually bothered to bring samples of those products, sometimes dismantled them, and showed us how they could have been put together. I only audited this a few months ago, and to this day I remember the concepts vividly.

On the other hand, in the videos I watched, the NPTEL course lecturer simply read out from powerpoint slides, which he prepared from a standard textbook. You were better off reading the textbook directly than watching the video alternating between the slides and the lecturer's face. It was a very uninspiring, depressing experience.

Re: MIT and Harvard agree to transfer edX to ed-tech firm 2U

#145

Post by xNeil »

kobiguru wrote: post #36

I am so happy that NPTEL NOC[1] and NPTEl Lectures [2] and Swayam[3] exists. These are indian government funded Moocs on almost everything engineering [1] https://nptel.ac.in/noc/noc_course.html [2] https://nptel.ac.in/course.html [3] https://swayam.gov.in/explorer

Second this. They're genuinely amazing, with IIT professors teaching their subjects (for engineering).

It's basically Indian OCW.

Re: MIT and Harvard agree to transfer edX to ed-tech firm 2U

#146

Post by nverno »

dragonwriter wrote: post #126
nverno wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MIT is the gold standard of education. Most of their computing classes already give you full access to all the course materials, videos, labs, readings, handouts, etc. directly from the course page. These direct resources are far better than typical edX/Coursera courses. The same is not generally true of Harvard courses (with a few exceptions like cs50), which hide all materials behind paywalls.

> MIT is the gold standard of education A complete tangent, but its somewhat amusing that this idiom remains popular when the literal gold standard itself is no longer generally considered a figurative gold standard of anything.

Orwell says something along the lines of never use outdated idioms in his Politics and the English Language. I'm withholding judgement on the extinctioness of this one until we see how the whole debt bubble plays out though :)

Re: MIT and Harvard agree to transfer edX to ed-tech firm 2U

#147

Post by Joky »

kerkeslager wrote: post #143
kerkeslager wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just cannot fathom the worldview that leads one to believe a for-profit company can solve the problem of for-profit education.

My previous post was a bit too glib, so here's an explanation: There's a common belief on Hacker News which verges on mental illness, that the best solution to any problem is free market capitalism. This belief is false because free market capitalism doesn't solve problems when the customer isn't the person with the problem. The problem in this case is a chicken-and-egg problem: it's hard to get money without an educ…

> The problem in this case is a chicken-and-egg problem: it's hard to get money without an education, and it's hard to get an education without money. > For-profit education cannot solve the problem, because for-profit education is the problem.

Have you seen school that only gets paid after you start working (and based on a percentage of your salary), for example: https://www.holbertonschool.com I like the concept in that these school are somehow "investing" in the student: they only get as successful as the student is.

Re: MIT and Harvard agree to transfer edX to ed-tech firm 2U

#148

Post by myhrvold »

dataflow wrote: post #130
benrbray wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I disagree. That's something we have in common :). My disagreement spans a few dimensions: * I've already been through school. An undergraduate and graduate degree already taught me how to learn. I have good habits, and I know how to buckle down and study when needed. For me, I find that having something to do with my hands while listening to a lecture actually helps me stay more focused on the topic. Before and af…

Nothing wrong with what you want, but I'm thinking you might not be the target audience?

A target audience is a good broader point about MOOCs and online education. (I took edX courses during the "glory days" of 2012 and 2013 -- and also tested out Udemy, Coursera, and Udacity at the time.)

The one-size-fits-most nature of online education goes against the "customize your education at scale to learn" which was an earlier anticipated advantage about MOOCs. Specifically, adaptive learning and being able to accommodate a variety of learning behaviors and styles. "Learn at your own pace, in your own way, on your own time but still within bounds to the rest of the class" kind of thing.

I remember when Stanford launched online CS courses in the mid 2010s, that it was thought they'd have the best of both worlds and their in-person, offline course offerings wouldn't be affected. (Diluted down to the lowest common denominator of student, which now included online learners who weren't Stanford students per se.) Well, over time, turns out double duty-ing course material for online and the "regular" classes crept into all education for instructors. Which meant the courses with online equivalents became easier across the board. Thus, the target audience for everything shifted.

Again, with acknowledged intentionality, I don't really have an issue with this (which you could crassly summarize as "dumbing down" the course offerings for convenience's sake) -- except that from my vantage point it was an unforeseen consequence of part of the online and MOOC push.

Obviously, I benefited from online courses in my mid 20s and so I look at their rise with nostalgia and through a rosier lens than many. However, I also can't help but think that they ended up being not quite what was promised at the outset, which was better targeting in addition to expanded educational access around the world. Especially for students who thought they'd signed up for the more challenging materials and didn't want to be part of a grand new experiment.

Interesting that MIT OpenCourseWare will outlast edX, which for a few years truly did look like it was the future of university level education and beyond.

Re: MIT and Harvard agree to transfer edX to ed-tech firm 2U

#149

Post by edgeform »

benrbray wrote: post #44
wodenokoto wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Breaking courses into useless 2-minute chunks and constant unhelpful quizzes. I really just want to hear the lecturer speak for 20-30 minutes at a time uninterrupted, especially if I'm listening while doing dishes etc. I disagree. If you’re doing dishes you are not taking a college level course. One of the best things about digital courses is that you don’t have to spend an hour zoning out to a professor talking an…

> I disagree. That's something we have in common :). My disagreement spans a few dimensions: * I've already been through school. An undergraduate and graduate degree already taught me how to learn. I have good habits, and I know how to buckle down and study when needed. For me, I find that having something to do with my hands while listening to a lecture actually helps me stay more focused on the topic. Before and af…

> "This product that isn't aimed at me isn't aimed at *me*, and that makes me stamp my feet in anger."

> Sometimes I already have background knowledge that overlaps with the course content.

I used to think like you, all the time. "Oh, I already know this." and while I'm sitting there being all smug and self-satisfied that I'm the smartest person in the room I realized:

* The content is good for a refresher. "Background" knowledge is just that, you're admitting you want to hear an expert speak on a subject yet want to throw out what they have to say because you "already know it from before this class".

* The content often provides context. Just like the "Previously on..." segment of TV shows that will recap specific plot points so the viewer understands the events of the new episode they're about to watch, discussing what you term "prior knowledge" will help contextualize the new content that you don't understand properly.

> Basically, I see no reason online courses can't be structured to give us more choices about how we want to consume the content!

OK, but that's not edX/Corsera's job lol

They don't have to cater to every single whim of every type of education personality. It's all well and fine that you, a multiple degree holder, would love to skip around content that you find boring/tedious/whatever while saying you want "someone qualified to teach me who can filter out what's important and what's not".

Like it or not, these websites are just simply not aimed at you, a large-brained Multiple Degree Holder. They're aimed at people who are behind you in education.

Re: MIT and Harvard agree to transfer edX to ed-tech firm 2U

#150

Post by estaseuropano »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #11
jp0d wrote: post #3

I'm doing my Micromasters in Statistics from MIT on EDX. Enjoying the amazing content and recognition of certificate. I'm not sure what this means for enrolled students like me. Is anyone else doing MicroMaster or similar course from a university and worried what this means? "MIT faculty may choose to continue to offer their courses through the new edX after the transaction is completed, or move them to MITx Online."

i had never heard the phrase "micromasters". Wikipedia suggests it is unique to EdX. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroMasters

Micromasters is a trademarked credential. Each of the different online learning platforms has their own, normally leaning on/leeching off established and recognised credentials as in this case the Masters. They could have made it an entire category, open to use by others and instead chose to TM it.
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