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Presentation Scales In Massive Online Courses; Does Interaction?
lpress writes "Coursera has demonstrated that they can scale presentations in massive, open, online courses — they have reached over 1.3 million students in 195 countries since they were funded in April. But can they scale student interaction? As of this morning, 7,839 Coursera students had formed 1,119 communities on Meetup.com in 1,014 cities — many outside the U.S." On the whole, isn't that a positive outcome?
On the whole, isn't that a positive outcome?
I dunno; are they forums where the blind lead the deaf or are they staffed with people who are able to answer questions correctly and quickly enough that students don't learn the wrong lessons?
Is it real interaction? Class interaction is talking to the professor for authoritative answers to questions, or in the case of the massively large science classes I took (CHEM 101 and PHYS 201-ish), they had a paid TA in the lab. Unless there is a paid TA in each of the 1000+ groups, they are nothing more than study groups, and aren't class interaction. There is no "official" answer to a question. There is no "interaction" with a class authority. That's not class interaction any more than friending a classmate on Facebook makes that classroom interaction (even if they meet in person, the difference is the lack of official representation in the group).
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On the whole, "interacting" via message boards is about as productive for education as typing with mittens on is for coding.
It depends on the message board. I have learned way more from Stack Overflow than I ever learned from a book. The content is well categorized, and both the questions and answers are rated in a way similar to Slashdot moderation. It seems to work very well.