I had to laugh out loud when I read this headline. My guess is, most professors don't think most of their students deserve credit these days, thanks to grade inflation and consistently decreasing standards.
72% Of Professors Who Teach Online Courses Don't Think Students Deserve Credit
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Re: 72% Of Professors Who Teach Online Courses Don't Think Students Deserve Credit
#22Even if you don't get "real" MIT credit, a certificate of completion from some of the courses is worth more than credit people get at some universities.
I think a potential employer would be able to sniff out somebody unqualified pretty quickly - but at least taking and completing the course shows a certain determination... maybe that's what needs acknowledging instead.
> I think a potential employer would be able to sniff out somebody unqualified pretty quickly
In the technology sector, sure. Here we do not even concern ourselves with credentialing to begin with because the work we do is out in the open and easy to evaluate.
Other industries, however, are not so lucky and struggle to sniff out the unqualified even with a strong credentialing system. I'm not sure an evaluation of determination helps them any more than what they have to go on today. People determined to get the job will always find some way to slip through the system without any real understanding of the underlying fundamentals.
With that said, I think MOOCs open up a whole new way to find talent, which could make the entire idea of credentials a thing of the past.
Re: 72% Of Professors Who Teach Online Courses Don't Think Students Deserve Credit
#23This isn't just bureaucratic self-protection. MOOCs really aren't ready for that yet. They're awesome, but much of the educational problem is social (tutoring and study groups, group projects, evaluation that can't be automated) and even though "social" is the buzzword of the 2010s, we as a technological society aren't good (at scale) at that stuff yet.
I think that the next step of evolution is free coursework and flat social features (forums with voting, programmatic expert discovery) while the gold-stamped examinations, coursework reviews by PhD'd humans, and tutoring sessions from vetted experts will cost money. If you take the free version, you're matched by an ML algorithm with a volunteer tutor and 95% of the time, you'll get quality. The paid version sets up with a TA at 8:00 pm on Tuesday, and you pay $40 for a half-hour video session.
MOOCs will get there. There's another way to look at this: 28% of professors do think MOOCs are ready for prime time. That's much higher than I would have thought.
Re: 72% Of Professors Who Teach Online Courses Don't Think Students Deserve Credit
#24Hey The Chronicle and techcrunch: even this ◕ is closer to the actual numbers than your plainly wrong pie chart[1]. 72% is less than 3/4. You show something about 77%. Please get some more editors.
good luck i'm not alone: http://fyre.it/Los9xk.4
Yet it's kind of scary that for 4 days, of this being published on The Chronicle[2] with it's supposedly well educated audience nobody seems to have noticed it. Guess that shows that charts are even less relevant and precise to transport information than I imagined.
[2] http://chronicle.com/article/The-Professors-Behind-the-MOOC/...
Re: 72% Of Professors Who Teach Online Courses Don't Think Students Deserve Credit
#2572 percent of professors who have taught Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) don’t believe that students should get official college credit ... which means the actual number of professors who discount the quality of MOOCs is probably much (much) higher. They are making a huge unwarranted leap when they go from a professor thinking someone doesn't deserve official credit to saying that the quality of a course is low.…
If I ever return to school, I'd certainly be willing to consider online courses in combination with testing at an approved location.
Re: 72% Of Professors Who Teach Online Courses Don't Think Students Deserve Credit
#2672 percent of professors who have taught Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) don’t believe that students should get official college credit ... which means the actual number of professors who discount the quality of MOOCs is probably much (much) higher. They are making a huge unwarranted leap when they go from a professor thinking someone doesn't deserve official credit to saying that the quality of a course is low.…
In fact, the article they reference cites that the vast majority of the professors actually think MOOCs are WORTH THE HYPE!
This article is sensationalist for sure.
Re: 72% Of Professors Who Teach Online Courses Don't Think Students Deserve Credit
#2772 percent of professors who have taught Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) don’t believe that students should get official college credit ... which means the actual number of professors who discount the quality of MOOCs is probably much (much) higher. They are making a huge unwarranted leap when they go from a professor thinking someone doesn't deserve official credit to saying that the quality of a course is low.…
"The issue is one of accountability, not quality."
The issue is also one of dilution of the institution granting the credit and branding.
If someone is able to take an online course and receive credit they will then be able to infer an affiliation with the institution that will dilute the value of an existing degree from that institution.
This already of course can and does happen (just like locks don't prevent everyone from breaking into your home or office) but opening up the floodgates to people who will most certainly claim and fudge that they attended or are somehow affiliated with top shelf universities is definitely an issue.
Case in point is what happened with the Wharton Evening School. Although the link I provided certainly tells a different spin and story the real reason is that it was trivial to get into the evening school (compared to Penn as a regular undergraduate) and Penn had a bunch of those graduates running around with BBA's as students who graduated from Wharton. (Which of course they did but not of the same caliber as the regular graduates).
Re: 72% Of Professors Who Teach Online Courses Don't Think Students Deserve Credit
#28I haven't taught a MOOC but I have "taught" a more traditional online course with 20-some students and I don't think it was really all that great. The reason I put "taught" in quotes is because it was a standardized course where all the sections taught at the state-wide community college had to be exactly the same so I was basically just a grader. I didn't have any opportunity to actually "teach" anything so when a student turned in an assignment that was totally wrong, there was no opportunity for me to intervene and give the student a chance to redo it or to give the student any substantial guidance.
Moreover, because most students would wait until the last minute to do the work, they might turn in the next assignment before I had a chance to grade their previous assignment so they would not only do one assignment wrong but then the next one and the next one and I can't do anything about it. I feel for the person, so I'm not going to fail the student. So the student gets a C in the class, doesn't learn anything or even worse learns the wrong thing and my hands are basically tied.
Re: 72% Of Professors Who Teach Online Courses Don't Think Students Deserve Credit
#2972 percent of professors who have taught Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) don’t believe that students should get official college credit ... which means the actual number of professors who discount the quality of MOOCs is probably much (much) higher. They are making a huge unwarranted leap when they go from a professor thinking someone doesn't deserve official credit to saying that the quality of a course is low.…
If I ever return to school, I'd certainly be willing to consider online courses in combination with testing at an approved location.
If I ever return to school, I'm going to want what I didn't get nearly enough of in my undergraduate degree: in-person access to professors.
I don't want college credit for browsing the web and watching videos. I want coaching, feedback and interaction from people with deep knowledge in their field.
Re: 72% Of Professors Who Teach Online Courses Don't Think Students Deserve Credit
#30Since when is "MOOC" == "online course"?
Oh, right. Techcrunch.