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For Online Courses, Questions Over How Success is Measured (2014)

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Re: For Online Courses, Questions Over How Success is Measured (2014)

#61

Post by modernyogihippy »

codeisawesome wrote: post #60

Until Visa officials around the World wake up and smell the coffee that Degrees shouldn't matter for immigration - I will care about and be anxious about my lack of a Degree. Until MOOCs don't confer a degree - it's going to be very hard to convince me to spend time getting a Certificate from it (as opposed to watching the most interesting and important bits and skipping the rest, in the "YouTube University" style).

Unfortunately, I don't think degree requirements are going to go away anytime soon for immigration purposes. Just imagine the backlash in the US/EU if the voting public finds out that people without degrees can now move to their countries. Many will link his to a mass-movement of unskilled and unwanted labor as opposed to talented and hardworking individuals.

Re: For Online Courses, Questions Over How Success is Measured (2014)

#62

Post by codeisawesome »

modernyogihippy wrote: post #61
codeisawesome wrote: post #60

Until Visa officials around the World wake up and smell the coffee that Degrees shouldn't matter for immigration - I will care about and be anxious about my lack of a Degree. Until MOOCs don't confer a degree - it's going to be very hard to convince me to spend time getting a Certificate from it (as opposed to watching the most interesting and important bits and skipping the rest, in the "YouTube University" style).

Unfortunately, I don't think degree requirements are going to go away anytime soon for immigration purposes. Just imagine the backlash in the US/EU if the voting public finds out that people without degrees can now move to their countries. Many will link his to a mass-movement of unskilled and unwanted labor as opposed to talented and hardworking individuals.

That's very sad, but I suppose I can take a twisted comfort from it: the fact that this public attitude is unlikely to change in my productive lifetime means, it's worth girding down and getting a degree. At least it's unlikely that 10 years later I'll regret the time I wasted chasing a piece (or two) of paper(s) ~6 years prior.

Re: For Online Courses, Questions Over How Success is Measured (2014)

#63

Post by modernyogihippy »

irrational wrote: post #30

I assume this is just free courses. I’ve been an online instructor for a university for 4 years as a side gig. I’d say the completion rate is about 85%.

> I assume this is just free courses

That is what I thought as well. People who pay a handsome sum for an online course are not going to let their money go to waste. Something about paying up simply ensures that you turn up and actually attend/finish a course.

Re: For Online Courses, Questions Over How Success is Measured (2014)

#64

Post by fujiters »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #52

I am always amazed when people make comments like this: "The results of the University of Texas at Austin’s first full-semester foray into massive open online courses, or MOOCs, are in." "Professor Michael Webber’s “Energy 101,” which had an enrollment that peaked at around 44,000 students, had 5,000 receive a certificate of completion — about 13 percent of the roughly 38,000 students who ultimately participated." So…

Exactly. I commonly enroll in Coursera classes just to get access to the video lectures for later perusal for information relevant to my work and interests.

Re: For Online Courses, Questions Over How Success is Measured (2014)

#65

Post by michaelmrose »

gamesbrainiac wrote: post #28

I think this emphasis on completion rates are a problem. I take a lot of MOOCs, but not all the content in said MOOCs are important. I just watch the parts of courses that are important or relevant to what I am doing, and call it a day. For people learning from non-conventional sources, they are used to using bits and pieces from different online sources and building up their own courses and their own paths. This fas…

You hit the nail on the head and I'm going to shamelessly steal the last sentence because it's a great turn of phrase.

Imagine you ran a class with 90% casual users wherein 80% of serious users finished and 10% of casuals. Out of 1000 users 170 would finish or 17%.

Charging increasing amounts of money would drive away increasingly large number of casual users while increasing completion rates.

By the time you get rid of all your casual users you will have an 80% competition rate while halving the number of people who take the class to completion and decreasing the number who learn something by 90%.

Maybe we can measure the relative preparation of incoming students who participated in moocs vs those who did not to better understand how much people benefit?

Re: For Online Courses, Questions Over How Success is Measured (2014)

#66

Post by michaelmrose »

hiisukun wrote: post #51
gamesbrainiac wrote: post #28

I think this emphasis on completion rates are a problem. I take a lot of MOOCs, but not all the content in said MOOCs are important. I just watch the parts of courses that are important or relevant to what I am doing, and call it a day. For people learning from non-conventional sources, they are used to using bits and pieces from different online sources and building up their own courses and their own paths. This fas…

I too have signed up to a mooc, simply to watch a particular lecture or two on a topic - as recommended by colleagues or friends. No intention of completing the course, and in fact very happy with the content. Perhaps they need a box on the signup or viewing form, to indicate "just checking it out to see if I'm interested", or "just here to watch part of the course". Here in Australia, when students finish high schoo…

How about making all the content viewable without signing up for the class instead of a checkbox.

Re: For Online Courses, Questions Over How Success is Measured (2014)

#67

Post by mnky9800n »

gamesbrainiac wrote: post #28

I think this emphasis on completion rates are a problem. I take a lot of MOOCs, but not all the content in said MOOCs are important. I just watch the parts of courses that are important or relevant to what I am doing, and call it a day. For people learning from non-conventional sources, they are used to using bits and pieces from different online sources and building up their own courses and their own paths. This fas…

I have done research on moocs. I think this article is a relic of it's time (2014). While some people are still focused on completion rates, I think many researchers have moved on to instead focus on other topics.

Re: For Online Courses, Questions Over How Success is Measured (2014)

#68

Post by learnstats2 »

strken wrote: post #43
the_jeremy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe the completion rate is similar for people who buy books. There's an even lower bar to entry: all the MOOCs I've participated in have been free.

They might be free, but all the MOOCs I've participated in have required a weekly time commitment to complete them, which is a sort of hidden cost completely separate from money. I've started the Stanford ML course on Coursera three times now, and each time some real-life thing has come up and taken me out of action for a couple of weeks.

That's just what free means, isn't it? The cost is separate from money.

I don't think it's hidden that you have to study in order to learn.

Re: For Online Courses, Questions Over How Success is Measured (2014)

#69

Post by mnky9800n »

Chathamization wrote: post #35
gamesbrainiac wrote: post #28

I think this emphasis on completion rates are a problem. I take a lot of MOOCs, but not all the content in said MOOCs are important. I just watch the parts of courses that are important or relevant to what I am doing, and call it a day. For people learning from non-conventional sources, they are used to using bits and pieces from different online sources and building up their own courses and their own paths. This fas…

Very much this. I think a large issue with MOOCs is that they're too focused on emulating the structure of a university class - focus on lectures, community built around specific classes, focusing on the metric of course completion rather than on attaining skills, etc. People who successfully teach themselves things (and right now, there are many people using the internet to teach themselves things) often have a very…

I think the Microsoft edx moocs have solved this problem pretty well. They are typically focused on a more narrow topic, they are shorter (usually around a month), and they are very explicit on the weekly time required and this actually matches.

I've used msft edx to learn bootstrap and their azure machine learning platform and they were there best moocs I've ever taken.

Re: For Online Courses, Questions Over How Success is Measured (2014)

#70

Post by fouc »

computator wrote: post #22

Can I bounce an idea off Hacker News readers? How about doing live events at which you simply play -- on an overhead screen -- the very best videos or courseware from the web on selected technical topics. You get the best possible presentation and the chance to mingle with people who are keen on the same subject. You'd still need a person to act as a moderator or host, but there would be no official speakers. Would y…

Interesting idea. I think the real trick would be handling Q&A, and encouraging discussions?
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