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How MOOC Faculty Exploit People's Desire To Learn
RichDiesal writes "Just as businesses try to make something off of massively online open courses (MOOCs), so do the faculty running them. But instead of seeking money, MOOC faculty seek something far more valuable: a cheap source of data for social science research. Unfortunately, the rights of research participants are sometimes ignored in MOOCs, and successful completion of courses are sometimes held hostage in exchange for mandatory participation in research, as in this case study of a Coursera MOOC. Such behavior is not tolerated in "real" college courses, so why is it tolerated in MOOCs taught by the same faculty?"
Sounds like somebody has an axe to grind
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
If it was a real experiment, they'd have to have an ethics review and all the details of the research would have to be disclosed to the participants. Since this is not happening, any data derived from the MOOC "research" is not ethically sound, probably completely invalid from a social science perspective, and should probably get Coursera in trouble with certain academic circles.
I recall that in Psych 101 at my university in order to pass one had to do a certain number of hours of "research study participation". This entailed going to an office in the psych building and being a psych subject in some grad student's experiment. I don't remember anyone complaining too much about this.
It's tolerated for the same reason "free" services such as those provided by Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, and most any other important social media company display ads and do data mining on visitor and subscriber behavior. The research being conducted with the data collected in MOOCs is one of the most socially valuable results possible since it leads directly to better education for the world. As Andrew Ng has stated plainly, his primary concern in participating in Coursera is delivering the best education possible to the world's poorest people. Coursera A/B tests most every aspect of the student learning experience and makes decisions based on what results in the best student learning outcome. Exactly what better system are you proposing?
There are lots of services that one gets from the government which come with all sorts of catchs. Obviously you never read your student bullitin and talked to people who were expelled. What right did Brown University have in expelling Amy Carter?
Actually researchers are required by state laws and university guidelines to follow research consent laws regardless of whether they are done via the university or not. In this case however, the issue is blurred because it depends what the researcher is doing. The line between research using aggregated data and using platform BI tools to benchmark effectiveness are related things but different. It may not be easy to draw the lines as easily as before because data is used for everything now.
It's also the same as a face to face course. When I teach a course I use student responses and feedback to improve the course the next time I teach it. While some of the feedback is voluntary, end of course questionnaires some of it is me looking at student responses to e.g. assignments and rewording questions to avoid common misinterpretations or looking at exam answers and adding or changing assignment questions to make students focus on concepts a large number had problems with.
This is how teaching has worked since it first began Each year's students are benefiting from the data provided by the previous years. The only difference with a MOOC is that this is more quantified which is has to be given the size of the enrolment. So long as the data is used to improve the teaching of the course then I don't see an issue because this is what teachers do innately (although you do need special, voluntary permission as well as ethics oversight if you wish to make any results public).
However if the data is going to be used for non-teaching purposes e.g. to make more effective ads, then this needs to be made crystal clear to students before they sign up for the course so they know what is going on and what the price for a "free" course is. While this sort of thing would not be tolerated in a course that you pay for in a "free" course, so long as consent is informed and up front, what's the problem?
Fuck with their data. Give them false answers and rub it in.
I almost never answer online marketing surveys truthfully, particularly when they are required for something they shouldn't be required for. It should be no different when academia does it.
I think it's pretty obvious to everyone that a MOOC is going to be an inferior experience to a physical lecture and TA-led study sessions. On the other hand it's drastically better than the "no education" you could alternately get for the same price. And if you have an axe to grind against 50,000:1 ratios, are you volunteering to teach at more reasonable ratio in southern Africa or India at local wages?
As far as the lecture itself goes, frankly I would be surprised if 50,000:1 were notably worse than the 500:1 you sometimes see in intro courses, or even a 50:1 ratio. Once the class is too large for the professor to meaningfully engage with students individually then what does it matter how many extra eyes are watching?. It might even be better given the quantized feedback and sample size, and the fact that you can actually read the "blackboard" comfortably. Not to mention immediately back up and repeat any bits that confuse you.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Sounds like somebody has an axe to grind
He writes and sells books - http://www.amazon.com/Step-Step-Introduction-Statistics-Business/dp/1446208214
MOOC's bypass the need for the books he sells.
Most MOOCs I've taken had a suggested reading list and many of the books are ones like his.
In other words, MOOCs are an AWESOME way for promoting your book.
Going to a brick and mortar univerrsity will cost you tens of thousands of dollars. How much do MOOCs cost you? Most likely the cost is zero.
As someone who needed to spend years crawling out of my university debt, you would need to use an electron microscope to see the size of the violin I'm playing right now.
Nothing in this world comes for free, nor should it. If you don't like it, then do without, you bloody self-entitled cheepskates.
If they "force" you to participate in a study, simply give them garbage results. Choose options at random without reading the question. Deliberately choose false/wrong statements. Do whatever you can to ruin their data-set.
From the article: Instead of paying new employees during an onboarding and training period, business can now require employees to take a “free course” before paying them a dime.
The next step is when companies start suggesting the problems they would like to have solved for course credit. The course is "free" to the participant,but somebody is paying the bills, and that somebody expects to get something of value.
From the original post: "Such behavior is not tolerated in "real" college courses, so why is it tolerated in MOOCs taught by the same faculty?"
TFA answers the question quite nicely: "Despite a couple of years of discussion, the question of monetization remains largely unresolved. MOOCs are about as popular as they were, they still drain resources from the companies hosting them, and they still don’t provide much to those hosts in return." Good or bad, it's an attempt to try to get something useful in return for the effort it takes to create a MOOC course. It's as simple as that, and there's no reason to read anything more sinister into it.
And let's not hyperbolically describe this as "holding the users hostage," okay? Users are free to leave the course whenever they want -- hostage situations don't usually work that way.
Didn't someone point out that if you're getting something for free, you probably are the product? In the same way that Facebook happily sells your personal information to advertisers, these professors use your information for their own benefit. If you get something for (nothing | less than full price) it's probably in exchange for something else.
As far as the lecture itself goes, frankly I would be surprised if 50,000:1 were notably worse than the 500:1 you sometimes see in intro courses, or even a 50:1 ratio. Once the class is too large for the professor to meaningfully engage with students individually then what does it matter how many extra eyes are watching?
Well, there's the problem of fitting the extra few thousand professors into the room.
"...successful completion of courses are sometimes held hostage in exchange for mandatory participation in research, as in this case study of a Coursera MOOC. Such behavior is not tolerated in 'real' college courses..."
Signing up for one or more experiments was a requirement of every undergrad psych class I took.
I disagree that an online class is inferior. Far too often lecturers don't really do anything more than quote a textbook verbatim.
The online approach allows for an easier way to look up things on the fly (alleviating the need for expensive textbooks somewhat) and allows a greater degree of social participation through things like forums.
It also allows more freedom for different methods of learning, instead of assuming everyone learns in the same way.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
the cheap ones say no data cap and some do slowdown after X data use.
free course is better then a high cost theory based degree with big skill gaps.
No it isn't. Skills become obsolete in a year. Theory never does.
but that Theory can also be part of skills based plan that does 4 years of pure class room. Why not have an apprenticeship system?
Horrible story text.
I'm wasn't aware that universities had an existing policy in effect protecting non-tuititive students from forced enrolment of their metadata in minor research programs.
Doesn't he have somewhere else to troll?
TINSTAAFL
Y'know, I was wondering which was going to win out- /.'s general disdain for Formal Education vs. /.'s worship of technology. Looks like MOOCs have been around long enough for /.ers to start thinking about them like the rest of Formal Education.
/. will break in it's next article on MOOCs (my money's on "back to mindless adoration").
If anyone's interested, we could probably find some open source software to run a betting pool on how
I took that first Thrun/Norvig pre-Udacity AI course. I have been taking one or two Udacity or Coursera courses per season since they started up. Before any of this, I was watching Stanford courses on iTunesU. Sometimes I complete the course. Sometimes I don't. But I almost always get something out of the courses. I am a mid-senior software engineer, but I still have plenty to learn.
I have never been the kind of student who approached the professor outside of class, so I think that MOOCs are fine (I barely even use the MOOC forums.) Most of the problems that I have found with the MOOCs could have just as easily been a problem with an in-person course.
For example, I recently took a Coursera Social Psychology course. It started off very interesting, but, about halfway through, it seemed clear to me that the lecturer had an agenda and the course veered into promoting the agenda (plus a little "help me refine some psychology software that I have been developing") over education on the topics. Since I was more than halfway through I finished watching all of the lectures, but found myself rolling my eyes more and more frequently. But, I have seen that kind of thing in in-person courses, as has my perpetual grad student brother.
I have applied for the Udacity/GATech Online Master of CS program. If I get in, since I will be paying money, I will take it more seriously than I have the other MOOCs that I have taken.
Heheheh. How did I miss that?!?!
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I have surveyed several coursera courses and completed a couple. Being a Comp Sci, telecoms professional, I derived tremendous value from Coursera material related to these disciplines. Only cost is my time. The video lectures are gold. Most classes that I've seen are project based. Learning is doing. In general, I've found that course difficulty usually floats somewhere between college senior and first year grad student. Some are just insanely hard. One has to accept that one bit of important material is missing, proofs. Just no way to auto-grade them, in general. I haven't seen anything to complain about.
The research being conducted with the data collected in MOOCs is one of the most socially valuable results possible since it leads directly to better education for the world.
This scans like marketing newspeak. Astroturf?
Da Blog
> The university sponsoring it is Yale and the professor was just awarded the Nobel prize!
That is... naive. It is highly unlikely that that professor has any hand in this. It is like saying "pharao Khufu(Cheops) built the great pyramid", only that the pharao likely had a much bigger role in building the pyramid - he caused it to happen in the first place, while the professor may or may not have heard of all the tiny little things his team of Ph.D.s and Ph.D. hopefuls and other helpers are doing all day. That doesn't mean it's bad, my favorite (youtube, http://www.youtube.com/user/bullharrier/videos) medical lectures, for example, are from some unknown guy at a relatively unknown university after checking out what the ivy league videos had to offer. So you are naive for another reason yet: "leader (or famous person) cult".
> That is... naive. It is highly unlikely that that professor has any hand in this.
I suspect you are wrong. Prof. Shiller already makes his classes available through OpenYale. I have watched several of his lectures. His lectures are quite engaging and he seems to enjoy teaching.
I am a teacher and that's exactly what I have been thinking for many years. One of the things that changed my opinion was Daphne Koller's TED talk
Sometimes professors will do a pre-survey trial on students before running the study by the IRB board, just to make sure there is a "there" there. If the results are what they anticipated, they'll formalize the study and then run it by the IRB for approval. The original data will be thrown out and they'll redo the survey the proper way. I suspect the prof running the MOOC was doing just that.
Holding it hostage for class credit, though? Usually they'll provide an alternate assignment if someone whines about it. Sure, go write a paper instead. Or they'll offer the survey for extra credit, which is perfectly acceptable.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
This is certainly allowed in college courses and is how I get the bulk of the subjects for my own research.