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MIT Considers Whether Courses Are Outdated

Posted by timothy on from the $43,210-for-9-months dept.

jyosim (904245) writes People now buy songs, not albums. They read articles, not newspapers. So why not mix and match learning "modules" rather than lock into 12-week university courses? A committee at MIT exploring the future of the elite school suggested that courses might now be outdated, and recommended creating learning modules that students could mix and match. The report imagines a world in which students can take online courses they assemble themselves from parts they find online: "Much like a playlist on iTunes, a student could pick and choose the elements of a calculus or a biology course offered across the edX platform to meet his or her needs."

6 of 205 comments (clear)

  1. Idiots by TheRaven64 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The entire point of a university degree is to give you a guided tour of your ignorance. It's not to teach you everything about the subject, it's to tell you everything that you may want to learn within a subject so that you can then pick the bits to study in more detail yourself. If you let students pick the modules that they want, then you may as well just say 'here's a library, go and learn some stuff' and you'll get more or less the same results.

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    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    1. Re:Idiots by Richard_at_work · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The point of a structured educational degree is to give you a damn well rounded knowledge set of the topic, giving you a reasoned idea why the individual components of the topical area are important as a whole.

      Giving students the ability to pick and choose on a much finer basis allows them to potentially learn the mechanics of how to conduct experiments without covering the ethical considerations of conduction experiments. That isn't going to end well...

      Sometimes a students individual educational "needs" (rather, the term in the summary is wrong, it should be "wants" - the student "wants" to study the fun stuff, and "wants" to avoid the drudgery) is not the same as the "needs" of society as a whole as society would benefit more from graduates with a well rounded knowledge base rather than an enhanced specialism straight out of university.

    2. Re:Idiots by plopez · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Hmmm... let's see. The English classes I took help me write on a daily basis. Accounting came in handy when I worked for a non-profit that had to do fund raising; I use Psychology, Sociology, and Political Science daily; the art classes I look help me judge the usability of web sites, I took Differential Equations which came in handy when I worked for an Environmental Engineering firm, foreign languages gave me a better grasp of grammar and and foreign cultures, my Physics classes give be a better grasp on electrical and electronics concepts (which is handy if you want to work with hardware), Statistics comes in handy when I have to prepare quantitative reports, and Chemistry was also good to have when I worked for an Environmental Engineering firm.

      None of those were 'core' classes but the fulfilled part of my graduation requirements. You had to have a certain amount of hours in Social Sciences, Physical Sciences, Arts, and Literature at my Uni. I would probably not have studied them unless I had been told to. A well rounded education is priceless.

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      putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
  2. Ah, how sensible... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It is a good thing that calculus, much like a playlist on itunes, can be learned on 'shuffle' because none of it involves using results you arrived at earlier...

  3. Great idea - forget it. by Bearhouse · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It sounds superficially appealing, letting people choose what interests them or what they think they need to learn. But there's a couple of problems.

    Firstly, if we stick with the music analogy, how many artists or tracks have you discovered by random, and in doing so expanded your listening choices?

    Also, if you follow a well-structured course, you're getting what a subject-matter expert knows from experience you need to learn. Case in point, I would not have studied stats by choice, but now I'm damn glad it was hammered into me.

    The poor courses I've seen were not so much hampered by the format, more either by sub-par lecturers and/or poor, outdated materials.

  4. education is a business... by silfen · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I guess it applies in education too: "The first generation builds the business, the second makes it a success, and the third wrecks it”