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Online Education's Dirty Secret - Awful Retention

rein.pk

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Re: Online Education's Dirty Secret - Awful Retention

#81

Post by steveinflow »

I don't think low retention is a secret and I don't think it's a bad thing- it shows that there's no barrier to showing up but there is a barrier to completion. That's what we want- equal opportunity, without giving completion away unearned.

For my part I sign up for more classes than I could possibly complete. Sometimes I just want to take a peak at the material to see if it grabs me. And sometimes I just want to get familiar with a subject without going all-in, picking and choosing the lectures that are most relevant to me.

People shouldn't feel like they're hurting Coursera's/EdX's/Udacity's stats by dipping their toes.

Re: Online Education's Dirty Secret - Awful Retention

#82

Post by eah13 »

pkrein wrote: post #78
eah13 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think Coursera and EdX can do much better at using their design and content marketing talent to make these classes more accessible and successful. There's an interesting balance here. Professors I've talked to bemoan the lack of 'support' from Coursera (usually the universities provide a pot of money for profs to use themselves). But at the same time they would balk at some marketing guru coming in an 'spinning'…

oh i don't mean a marketing person who "spins" the course. but rather somebody who understands what messages to deliver to which students when. for example, if I haven't done any of the assignments in 3 weeks, telling me about admin for the upcoming exam is worthless. a designer and a content specialist understand this deeply and can help make the professor's communications more effective. "spinning" them would be wo…

Oh, definitely. I think a TA role like this that would help customize delivery, answer questions, and motivate would be great. I'm not sure its happening.

But regardless, I think many profs would feel like marketing help of any kind would be more like spinning content to make it more attractive to students, and worry about the integrity of what they're teaching.

Re: Online Education's Dirty Secret - Awful Retention

#83

Post by jcheng »

btilly wrote: post #46
michaelochurch wrote: post #37

The issue with Coursera is the synchronous model. The material's good and the selection's excellent, and they deserve a lot of props for solving such a critical problem. College life is sanitized. Real World interjections are rare enough, at that age, to be handled case-by-case when it comes to extensions and such. Adult life is messy and complicated-- sick parents become more common, job demands fluctuate-- and sync…

...in our ADD culture. As someone who has personal interaction with the disorder (I'm not officially diagnosed, but probably have it, my son has it, several siblings, nieces and nephews as well), I hate this phrase. Because people use it to mean the exact opposite of what the actual disorder is. People with ADD or ADHD (different names for pretty much the same thing) do not lack focus. To the contrary, a primary char…

That's an interesting and appealing description, but sounds pretty different than what Wikipedia has to say about ADD. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_deficit_disorder#se...

Re: Online Education's Dirty Secret - Awful Retention

#84

Post by andrewem »

eah13 wrote: post #72
andrewem wrote: post #64

My wife also wanted to take that Introductory Human Physiology course. She's a freelance medical translator, so improving her knowledge of that subject matter will have a direct positive impact on her career. She's not among the people who Daphne Koller said "never really intended to seriously take the class in the first place" - she bought the suggested books ahead of time, marked it all down on her calendar, and pl…

> What she found was that the course was way more difficult than the description suggested, and proved to be well above what she could understand with her current background. She watched the first video and found that it was going to take way more time than the course description predicted, because she would have to try to fill in a tremendous amount of background knowledge that the teachers presumed. It's quite poss…

I agree with your points, and thanks for putting them so clearly. The traditional solution for this is to have each university course specify its prerequisite courses, and for students to talk to the professor before the class starts if they're not sure it's appropriate. The latter happened to my friends and I much more during freshman year, when we weren't sure how our high school classes would prepare us, though it didn't always work perfectly - I knew lots of people who re-took calculus or a low-level foreign language class after having had it in high school, and found it way too easy.

Maybe in 5 or 10 years there will be enough online courses available that it would be clear that the Duke physiology class is harder, and some other class would be a good prerequisite to it. Or maybe there will be smaller modules that would fill in gaps for students who were close to ready for the class, or maybe it'll all be in smaller modules that you'll assemble into a coherent whole based on your current knowledge.

Re: Online Education's Dirty Secret - Awful Retention

#86

Post by jcmontalbano »

btilly wrote: post #46
michaelochurch wrote: post #37

The issue with Coursera is the synchronous model. The material's good and the selection's excellent, and they deserve a lot of props for solving such a critical problem. College life is sanitized. Real World interjections are rare enough, at that age, to be handled case-by-case when it comes to extensions and such. Adult life is messy and complicated-- sick parents become more common, job demands fluctuate-- and sync…

...in our ADD culture. As someone who has personal interaction with the disorder (I'm not officially diagnosed, but probably have it, my son has it, several siblings, nieces and nephews as well), I hate this phrase. Because people use it to mean the exact opposite of what the actual disorder is. People with ADD or ADHD (different names for pretty much the same thing) do not lack focus. To the contrary, a primary char…

"We lack the ability to focus on what we are told to focus on," or indeed in general I find that I lack the ability to control what I'm focusing on.

So I reduce distractions and work in a black box. With only one task in front of you, you get it done.

Re: Online Education's Dirty Secret - Awful Retention

#87

Post by Tycho »

tkahn6 wrote: post #3

I usually sign up for a bunch of classes just so I can access the material at a later point when I have time or when I'm interested. I'm pretty sure that in most cases Coursera locks you out of old material unless you were enrolled. I don't follow along with the class. Synchronous learning, IMO, is an anachronism. We have video recording technology, practically infinite bandwidth, and near speed of light communicatio…

Same with me - I signed up to loads of these things because I loved the idea. Turns out I didn't have time to actually do any of them, but it didn't cost me anything to sign up. I may at a later date search my inbox and access the material.

It's not really a retention problem if you offer something for free and tons of people have a look without making much commitment. Having said that, probably the only relevant statistics about these courses are how many people did them and completed the assignments/tests.

Re: Online Education's Dirty Secret - Awful Retention

#88

Post by eah13 »

andrewem wrote: post #84
eah13 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What she found was that the course was way more difficult than the description suggested, and proved to be well above what she could understand with her current background. She watched the first video and found that it was going to take way more time than the course description predicted, because she would have to try to fill in a tremendous amount of background knowledge that the teachers presumed. It's quite poss…

I agree with your points, and thanks for putting them so clearly. The traditional solution for this is to have each university course specify its prerequisite courses, and for students to talk to the professor before the class starts if they're not sure it's appropriate. The latter happened to my friends and I much more during freshman year, when we weren't sure how our high school classes would prepare us, though it…

An additional possibility would be measuring the background knowledge students have and are comfortable with so it can be better matched up with each course.

The thing is, all of these speculations bear empirical confirmation. We have to see what works best in the wild and there will be a coevolution of student behavior, teaching strategies, and companies in the space.

Re: Online Education's Dirty Secret - Awful Retention

#89

Post by jacalata »

mshron wrote: post #47
michaelochurch wrote: post #37

The issue with Coursera is the synchronous model. The material's good and the selection's excellent, and they deserve a lot of props for solving such a critical problem. College life is sanitized. Real World interjections are rare enough, at that age, to be handled case-by-case when it comes to extensions and such. Adult life is messy and complicated-- sick parents become more common, job demands fluctuate-- and sync…

I think Coursera has struck a very effective balance between synchronous and asynchronous learning. Once you sign up for a class, you're able to go back and watch videos, get assignments, even submit assignments for automated grading. For those of us who find the synchronous style to be a sufficient motivator, it's a great benefit. For people who fall behind but want to cover the material, they're welcome to do so. T…

That's certainly not true for all Coursera courses. I took one in February - if I go back and look at it now all the material is gone (although the lecturer put the videos on youtube) and there is nothing but a flat description of what the course was. I'm actually signed up for a course now that I found out about half way through and didn't have time to do on the spot, so I'm looking for a way to download all the material because I fully expect it to disappear once the course 'finishes'.

Re: Online Education's Dirty Secret - Awful Retention

#90

Post by robryan »

jahmohn wrote: post #66
pamelafox wrote: post #13

(Coursera engineer here) It's great to see thoughtful critiques like this. Thankfully, we have a data analytics team now (3 out of our 17 engineers), and they are studying our retention statistics and the factors that affect it. They're also running A/B experiments to see what increases it and getting some interesting results. We do see some big advantages of the timed model for learning, particularly in classes with…

Hi, Pamela. I am a long-time user of Coursera and I love the site. I have feedback for you as regards retention of students. The number one thing is due dates and late penalties. If I sign up for a course and work through the first few weeks and get everything done, and then I miss a deadline because life happens, suddenly I am no longer able to get a 100% in the class. I do not mind getting an A- in a class if it ha…

For online learning the grades aren't likely to matter, people are mainly doing it to get the knowledge. I can see though if you distilled it down into telling people what you got, say a B, won't reflect how well you actually learned the content if the B was only the result of late handins.

On the other side of the coin though people are relying on the strictness of handin times in order to motivate them to get through the course in a reasonable amount of time.

Timed based on a final date to finish everything is a compromise but wouldn't work for everyone, as some would loose motivation after falling too far behind. So maybe there needs to be a few deadlines throughout the course, but not a weekly one.

The only course I have done I ended up missing a week handin as well, I think most working people would be in the same boat.

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