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The MOOC Revolution That Wasn't
An anonymous reader writes: Dan Friedman at TechCrunch is ready to call Massive Open Online Courses a failure. Originally hailed as a revolution in learning, MOOCs have seen disappointing course completion numbers. Coursera and Udacity, two of the most prominent online learning hubs, have seen about 8 million enrollments in the past few years. Unfortunately, half of those students didn't even watch a single lecture, and only a few hundred thousand completed the course they signed up for.
Friedman says, "[N]ew technologies enable methods of "learn by doing" that just weren't possible before we could deliver immersive experiences to people's laptops and phones. In the 1960's, Jerome Bruner expanded an educational theory known as constructivism with the idea that students should learn through inquiry under the guidance of a teacher to grasp complex ideas intuitively. That process of trial, failure, and then being shown the correct path has been proven to drive student motivation and retention of learning. What we don't yet know is if that process of trial and failure can become 10x more engaging when delivered through a new medium such as Minecraft or Oculus. ... These new immersive worlds promise to hold the attention of students in ways textbooks never could."
Friedman says, "[N]ew technologies enable methods of "learn by doing" that just weren't possible before we could deliver immersive experiences to people's laptops and phones. In the 1960's, Jerome Bruner expanded an educational theory known as constructivism with the idea that students should learn through inquiry under the guidance of a teacher to grasp complex ideas intuitively. That process of trial, failure, and then being shown the correct path has been proven to drive student motivation and retention of learning. What we don't yet know is if that process of trial and failure can become 10x more engaging when delivered through a new medium such as Minecraft or Oculus. ... These new immersive worlds promise to hold the attention of students in ways textbooks never could."
suddenly i remember Ira Flatow on npr's science friday talking about how second life was going to take the education world by storm.... or something like that.
what ever happened to all that?
From TFA:
Having the full attention of an instructor accelerates an individual’s learning by focusing them on the right problems at the right times, and having a real relationship with one person provides students with accountability. At Thinkful, we see a spike in learning the day before students have sessions with their mentors. Students want to achieve more because of their relationship, and that motivation translates to more efficient learning. We’re now working to apply that same social pressure throughout the week to bring up overall learning time further.
In other words, our competitors in the online space have been doing it wrong. But we've come up with something so New and Improved, we don't call it MOOC. Whether you're an angel investor or just want to learn some new stuff, you owe it to yourself to check us out today.
I have signed up for 3 of these from Coursera. I've completed two and dumped one. They do involve a fair amount to time to get through, depending on how familiar you are with the subject matter to start with. I'm guessing most of the people who do this are people who sometimes think about going back to college but aren't quite willing to dump an existing career that pays the bills but perhaps leaves them not completely satisfied. I guess the question I would have is how important is it to these places that people finish their courses? Given that the price right now is $0, maybe they could charge a nominal free (like $20) to sign up, refundable if the course is completed.
How does that compare to conventional University/College. Probably a similar order of magnitude.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
When it's free, and there's no penalty for failing to participate, and it makes the news as a fad, then this is the expected result, not some outlier.
If anything they should be happy that a few hundred-thousand of the eight million actually completed it; assuming they're around 5% completion that's pretty good for something that there was no obligation to participate in, that required a fairly large amount of time committed that might not have been considered in advance, etc.
It's like an extreme version of the affluenza-type kid that's had everything handed to him going off to college because it's automatic; he does poorly and skips a lot because he has no stake in what happens. His parents pay for everything and he has none of his own cost on the line.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
All MOOC courses largely resemble university courses. You are supposed spend 1-2 hours per week on the videos, do extra reading from the textbook and do the assigned homework. After all this effort, you might get an online certificate that's useless for job purposes. This is too much work for casual students. We want courses designed for casual learning and that means flexible hours, fewer homework assignments.
Also some of the science and tech courses are very demanding but the teachers don't simplify it leading to many whooshing sounds for the student throughout the courses. Such courses could benefit from a simplified overview of the course material.
If you look at just this:
"a few hundred thousand completed the course"
How is that not revolutionary? Personally, I complete maybe 1 out of 10 that I sign up for because of life's duties intervening. Why should success be judged according to percentage completed, rather than number completed?
Not even close. Football players have a higher graduation rate than this 10% online school get.
I completed the Stanford AI course, recently did a course in communications from the University of Amsterdam. In both cases, time management was a problem for me, I simply had other things to do, and drifted away... catching back up in the nick of time. Trying to fit distance learning into the regular schedule of campus life seems to be the problem here... it is definitely not the depth of material that is any kind of a stopper.
I think that guided deep dives into topics we would otherwise not understand, is going to be how we keep accumulating knowledge as a species in the future. Deep diving takes time, and unlike the real diving... it doesn't all have to happen in one shot.
On a side note... it is worth at least $20 to me... possibly much more... if someone can give me the deep dive that results in me understanding the Higgs field, and the Higgs particle. A true understanding... not some vague notion of mexican hats and potential.
Well I have a theory. I has help up in all circumstances I have observed over the few decades I have spent as a tax paying citizen.
When things are free, expected outcomes, which would generally benefit subject populations never materialize..."
I have a few examples:
1: Collapse of the Canadian cod fishery industry
2: The extreme stress experienced by the so called "socialist" medical care system wherever it can be found. Result will be failure inevitably.
3: The obvious poor quality elementary and post elementary pupils western countries produce compared to kids from the Asian subcontinent where monies paid by hard-working parents, or even students themselves.
4: Hunger in some so called underdeveloped countries where starvation is obvious in the midst of lush green vegetation.
the people who go to MIT, Harvard and other top schools aren't more intelligent than anyone else, they put the effort in. they study until they are sure they will get an A, do their homework, etc. that's why the schools are selective.
MOOC's take anyone who wakes up one day with dreams of being a top programmer. when it's time to put the work in they go back to their old ways and find reasons why they are too busy to do the work. TV, netflix, going out drinking with the Bro's, gaming
Isn't Sesame Street the original, and most successful, MOOC?
For another point of view ...
This week, Russ Roberts chatted with former Stanford professor and Coursera co-founder Daphne Koller about the present and future of online education.
http://www.econtalk.org/archiv...
For the record, correspondence courses have been around since 1892. But somehow MOOCs are "disruptive" (have classrooms and disruption ever gone well together?). Here's a quotation from Wikipedia to add context:
In the United States William Rainey Harper, first president of the University of Chicago, developed the concept of extended education, whereby the research university had satellite colleges of education in the wider community. In 1892 he also encouraged the concept of correspondence school courses to further promote education, an idea that was put into practice by Columbia University.[12][13] Enrollment in the largest private for-profit school based in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the International Correspondence Schools grew explosively in the 1890s. Originally founded in 1888 to provide training for immigrant coal miners aiming to become state mine inspectors or foremen, it enrolled 2500 new students in 1894 and matriculated 72,000 new students in 1895. By 1906 total enrollments reached 900,000. The growth was due to sending out complete textbooks instead of single lessons, and the use of 1200 aggressive in-person salesmen.[14][15] There was a stark contrast in pedagogy:
The regular technical school or college aims to educate a man broadly; our aim, on the contrary, is to educate him only along some particular line. The college demands that a student shall have certain educational qualifications to enter it, and that all students study for approximately the same length of time, and when they have finished their courses they are supposed to be qualified to enter any one of a number of branches in some particular profession. We, on the contrary, are aiming to make our courses fit the particular needs of the student who takes them
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
The eye is bigger than the stomach. That is certainly part of the MOOC "failure". However, I don't consider it a failure. They have hundreds of thousands of students that finished a course. Is that failure? In comparison to the 8 million enrollments perhaps, but in comparison to the zero that would have done the course without MOOC, it isn't. I did a course. Followed all classes, didn't bother to get a grade or certificate, because (a) I couldn't put in the effort in the single week there was to do the project, (b) I didn't care about the certificate. It was just to learn something new. And I'm grateful to coursera that they offered this possibility.
When you're in a distracting environment where the wife and kids keep demanding attention, your mind will inevitably wander. Working remotely is more practical when you can be in a satellite office, not far from home but still a working environment as opposed to a home environment. If you're seriously taking MOOCs, try this sort of office instead of the house.
I'd be interested in seeing completion rates if people had to pay (put some skin in the game). The free concept could still apply too. Pay up front, if you complete the course with anything better than failing, you get your money back. It's a security deposit against yourself.
There are n different ways to explain every meme/concept/idea/knol,
For every person, there exist an optimal way to understand a concept.
A MOOC is just one more way to explain something. Only the people with the prior knowledge, correct mind frame, enough time, opportunity and will to complete the courses will.
If it is on techcrunch, don't waste your time reading it. They are the paparazzis of the internet.
I got through my courses on Cousera by white knuckling it.
Watching videos on the computer is very hard for me. I have to play them at 1.5x at least. Many lecturers suck - their lectures can be half as long and they speak too slow.
The quizes can be horrible. You get a wrong answer and do not understand why; well, you cannot discuss quiz answers on the forums.
Then there is the format and organization. Back in college, everything about the course was decribed in the sylabus. On Coursera, that my be the case or the details about the course is spread out over a bunch of links and outside websites - like a course Wiki.
On Coursera, we are encouraged to use the forums, Unfortunately, like the entire Internet there are Trolls and assholes. I asked a question and was told that "You do not belong here for asking such a stupid question!"
The fact that the Troll wan't removed tells me that the Troll's opinion was shared by the course instructor and his TAs. I finished the course with distinction - so much for not belonging there.
When learning, one needs to be able to ask "stupid" questions occasionally and if the teachers cannot accept that, then they have no business teaching.
Tl;dr: after several Coursera classes, I found them to be tedious, abusive, and my time is much better spent reading a book and asking questions on a forum that specializes in that subject. For example, Computer Science. Stackoverflow is much beter than ANY Mooc.
There are a few fundamental issues here and people from both sides of the classroom tend to ignore them. I have some education as a teacher and did actually teach undergraduate and graduate classes at a Uni.
Students are surprised that these courses are often demanding, that there is homework, etc. Hello, these are university level courses, what did you expect? This ain't vacation or World of Warcraft, only with a free diploma at the end.
Teachers are surprised that their classroom-oriented methods don't work when put online. Surprise, recording a lecture on a video, slapping it online and expecting the students to not get bored from the droning and just give up on this is silly. Especially when various extrinsic motivation that keeps students staying put in the auditoriums (like having paid expensive tuition or actually being able to obtain a proper, full degree) is missing. Lectures are boring as hell even when in person, it is probably the worst way to teach/learn. Recording the lecture, removing the personal contact and slapping the thing online only makes it worse. No fancy "e-learning" platforms can fix that fundamentally broken model.
Unfortunately, many unis see the "e-learning", online courses and what not as a great way to save money - no need to pay for so many classes, so many teachers, teachers can spend time doing research instead of teaching, etc. Win-win, right? Wrong!
The technology alone won't make the students learn - the role of the teacher as a facilitator and guide to learning is indispensable. Give students Minecraft (or a tablet or some other technical gimmick) and they will spend 99% of the time fooling around because of the distractions. They need someone to actually show them the relevant bits, explain what is not clear and guide them through the classwork - that is what the teacher is for. Non-interactive video cannot really replace that. While the classic lecture is also horrible from this point of view, the drone at the blackboard can be at least interrupted and asked extra questions. With video this is difficult or outright impossible.
Another crucially important thing for both the student and the teacher is feedback - "Am I doing OK?" "What needs to be improved?" "How to improve it?" If the only "feedback" for the student are automatically marked quizzes or the final mark/score for the course/module, as is often the rule, that really doesn't help them at all - they have perhaps failed the course or received a poor mark already. They need the (formative) feedback while still working!
Also the feedback for the lecturer is important - very often the students don't get anything from the class, because the lecturer mumbles incomprehensibly, is not organized or overloads the students. However, the typical way to collect feedback are some satisfaction questionnaires at the end of the term/module - way too late to fix anything. And now add yet another layer of insulation between the lecturer and the students - the non-interactive videos - and the realistic amount of feedback both sides can expect becomes exactly zero ...
During my teaching I was trying to get away from lecturing as much as I could - which can be surprisingly difficult, with the university administration explicitly expecting you to lecture. Where I could, the classes were focused on discussion, group work and projects. I was even turning the classes completely inside-out - had the students read the classwork from the textbook, do the exercises at home and then the class was spent explaining what wasn't clear or needed more guidance. There is little point in spending class lecturing for hours stuff that the students can read faster and more comfortably in a book. It did work, for the most part - even though the classes I was teaching were "hard" stuff - like programming, basics of computer graphics, introduction to artificial intelligence, image processing. However, do this with an e-learning system that is explicitly structured around lecturing!
I find these onlin
If a conventional University/college had pass rates like CourseRA, nobody would go. That would be like attending a intro class wtih 300 people and having 298 of those people fail. Or a community college class where everybody in the room failed. There's no way that a college could stay in business very long with pass rates like that. CourseRA does get away with it to an extent because it's free, but it's still an appalling amount of wasted effort.
I hate to admit it, but I signed up for a few courses at some MOOCs and never did even one lesson of some of those courses. I signed up thinking it would be awesome to learn the subject I signed up for, but then when it came to the time to do it, I didn't have the time to do it. That being said, I know that if I'd paid for the course, then I definitely would've done the courses or given more thought before deciding on whether I could do the course. The way it's all currently set up, you don't have to give any thought to it before signing up besides being excited, because if you change your mind later or if you can't do it later, then you don't lose anything for it.
That being the case, I think MOOC's should charge a small fee from everyone who signs up. Maybe $10-$100, depending on the course. When the student finishes, they either get all the money back or they get a percentage back. Then the student has something to lose, and will be sure to put more effort into the course and make people really think before signing up.
We want courses designed for casual learning and that means flexible hours, fewer homework assignments.
That's why a online class will never educate anyone.
I disagree, sir/madame.
You will get educated with a MOOC. BUT, will it count for a job? Nope.
I know because I have been there. I have learned quite a bit from MOOCs but employers don't give a shit.
Creator of a service says competitors service is inferior! Shocking!
Note: The article is written by a founder of Thinkful....which offers online learning. The whole article reads as an advertisement for thankful and an indictment of what their competition is doing wrong.
In other words, typical Slashvertisement. Nothing to see here.
It is hard to measure the benefits of MOOC. One, definitely, is the proportion of those that finished the course, but I would prefer to know what is the impact of those who learned something in economy and society. This is much harder to measure, but much more important. It is much like trying to measure the benefits of life in the universe. If you just take the life in the Universe and divide by the volume, well, you do not get much.
The best lecturer, when reduced to an image on a screen, is no better than the worst lecturer in person. Reality is immersive, while an image of a talking head is not. Film makers learned this long ago and implemented jump cuts, zooms, cameo close-ups, and the 15-second rule to maintain audience engagement. Until on-line courses learn from the past, they will not be harbingers of the future.
Ever since moocs started, people commit the same fallacy over and over again. If signing up for something is free, lots of people will do it even if they have no intention of completing a course. They might even find that they don't find it interesting enough to watch a single lecture after seeing the description and syllabus. Or they might just download the PDFs, or check out the discussion board. This all doesn't make moocs a failure, it only shows that you need to differentiate. I think the great majority of people who sign up for a class have no intention of completing it, they're just curious. I've completed a dozen moocs since 2011. In the same time I've signed up for about 50. Does that make the ones I didn't complete a failure? No, it just means my time is limited.
I have taken a bunch of different courses on Coursera. I didn't realize they were tracking completion rates - I just watch the videos, in order to learn something. I don't really care about the certificate, because it's worthless to me, so I'm not particularly strict about taking the quizzes or completing any of the graded work. The knowledge - that's worth a lot to me. I guess I don't know what their goals were in the first place, but I hardly consider them a failure. I have learned a lot of interesting things - and sure the information is already out there for free, but I sure appreciate having an instructor (in some cases, pretty famous professors) guiding me on what to go and learn. Of course, maybe they have a savvy business plan to "monetize the content". If that's the case, then yeah I suppose it's a failure so far.
Wait, a few hundred THOUSAND completed courses? How is this a failure? Forget completion rates. A FEW HUNDRED THOUSAND COMPLETED THE COURSES. That's HUGE, that's AMAZING. That is so far from failure this guy should be laughed off the internet.
My first week in college, I wanted to drop because all the courses I needed to complete were too much for me and I felt depressed. It was my first time in school after several years of procrastination, so it was hard and I was ready to drop.
This was since a guy approched me and asked me if I wanted to join his study group. I accepted and after a week or two, I felt like I was a very important part of the group, especially with my Linux skills (we had a Linux course and everyone had hard time). They taught me some networking and math and I taught them Linux. That sense of importance and responsability made me continue to the end with a very nice GPA, I made the dean's list. My group all got A+ in Linux because of me, and I was very proud.
All this to say that there is not enough interection between students in massive online courses. It is often hard to study alone, but when you have friends and you guys are pushing each other to work hard, and when you fail at an exam you feel ashamed to share your marks with them, that's what helps the most IMO. The consequences people are talking about when dropping an online course is not monetary consequences, it is the "judgement of your peers" consequences. Without that, nobody will feel shamed to be a coward and to resign.
If massive online courses had better interactive chat systems, local groups in major cities around the world with tutors assigned to help the students (maybe libraries - which are dying - could partner with them), etc... They might be successful. Also, videos recycled every years are boring, make it LIVE and you could talk with the teacher !
The failure of the MOOC can be attributed to the fact that a lot of people who try it are not ready for the courses, do not have the time or the drive (incentive) to complete them.
How many people who have been out of school for 20 years would be able to follow along much less complete a college level math course? It's pretty hard for someone to go and ask questions online when they don't know what to ask for.
To complete a college level course you need at least 3-10 hours of work a week to sit down and work on the material in order to gain a proper understanding of it. How many people have the time for that?
As far as incentives go, when you have responsibilities (family, business to run etc.), how high on the priority list is the course? Whats more important?
a) putting in a few hours at work for the extra pay
b) Spending time with the kids
c) Doing a MOOC
didn't even watch a single lecture
Therein lies the problem. I don't want to watch a fucking lecture. I don't want to slow down to the speed at which someone speaks. I can read much faster then someone can speak. I would greatly prefer to just read the material instead of watching a video. My mind will wander if I have to watch a lecture, since it is not being supplied information quickly enough. An occasional video that demonstrates something specific is fine, but not a lecture.
And apparently 4 million people watched at least one lecture. That's almost unbelievable.
Read the article. It's poorly written, all over the place, and doesn't say much. It's also written by a founder of "Thinkful", a (for profit, I must assume as it has "instututional investors" Peter Thiel, RRE Ventures, and Quotidian Ventures) startup. This whole thing smacks of FUD by the for-profit "educational" industry.
How awful is this industry and how low are they willing to stoop? Check out this expose from John Oliver.
Few if any of these actually offer a degree. If it did, the participation/success rate would skrocket
For example, I would love to get a bachelor/MSc in biology, not possible online.
Many types of studies are simply not avail.
What's being ignored is centuries of research has found the classroom environment really good for teaching. Books TVs and correspondence courses have all tried to replace it.
The latest whizbang technology isn't always the best answer.
Classrooms will be around until somebody find something that actually is better
How many people in the US have crappy ISP's that have ridiculously low speeds and/or cap bandwidth? Nearly fucking everybody. I doubt very many people are going to watch video lectures over slow links or run the risk of exceeding allotted bandwidth capacity, especially if they are required to pay overage charges instead of the usual throttling.
As a course TA I assure you we have no authority to ban someone although we can and do caution the often "anonymous" poster. The reality is 99.9% of course TAs are unpaid volunteers. Besides the level of forum participation in a typical MOOC is significantly less than one percent and people are allowed to click a box that makes them anonymous to other forum readers.
Having signed on for numerous online courses over the years, I've found the majority are very pooly implemented, over engineered and badly paced.
MOOC is a great concept, but in my own experience from edx.org, it is somewhat sloppy in execution. I think it could be done great, and be motivating and inspiring, but more effort must be put into the material. Often it is just a hash of lecture material, recited with a camera running.
MOOCs are really useful because they COULD HELP to create a committed Network of dedicated learners. As many of you already know: Learning does not stop when classes are finished. If I were in charge of a MOOC, I would like to learn from our students (among many other things) 1) Their motivations to take specific courses... 2) Their expectations and opinions about every course completed (or dismissed). 3) A description (as complete as possible) of their ideal MOOC course, including Professor(s), Textbooks, Schedule, Academic load and Degree expected... 4) In which way this course helps them towards their life goals... 5) Would you recommend this course to others? I see MOOCs as a BIG OPORTUNITY to engage people in a Lifelong learning adventure. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
I'm amazed by how often these "MOOCs can't replace traditional classroom" arguments come up. Well no shit! The MOOC formats provide broad access and logistical ease for self-learning better than any previously existing educational technology, but online interactions are still no match for personal assistance. Most MOOC sites realize this - they're not trying to supplant traditional education, they're trying to supplement it. I fail to see how the MOOC revolution is over when there's still plenty of opportunity to fill in gaps between traditional universities and massive free sites like Coursera (which is exactly what the author's site is doing).
MOOCs are great for disciplined students (like me). I carefully choose courses based on what I want to learn about and only take one at a time. It does not matter to me that no college credit is awarded (I already have a BS and MBA). I commit to completing courses just like I was paying for them which means I continue irrespective of how good, bad, or difficult I find the course to be. I always learn more that I expected. Sometimes the most important learning happens as the result of course discussion forum interactions! The key to success with any MOOC is to have a daily/weekly study schedule and stick to it. 'Free time' should be just that, time to do anything you want to - or not!
Which is a problem with employers, not MOOC's. I have learned a tremendous amount from MOOC's - quickly - and can apply it, which is what should really matter. Classroom instruction (for me) simply takes too long. I download the videos, watch as needed, then actually do something with it.
This notion of 'credentials' is total BS. You either understand and can apply material in the real world or you can't - that's ALL that should matter to employers. I know a ton of idiots with degrees.
That's a societal problem. Try and get a job specifying in your resume that your education consists of online courses. Potential employers will probably laugh at you. In addition, a degree from a prestigious institution will command far more respect among your peers than any online courses. It does not have to be this way, and it may not always be this; but it is now, and it will probably remain so for decades, at least.
Bah. If MOOCs are a failure, that's because they're doing it wrong. There's a lot of good research saying that humans learn best through experimentation and projects, and in groups... MOOCs can't do that.
I'm still waiting for our hidebound education system to do "homework" in class with other students and where the teacher can help and do "lecture" via a recording that students can watch while they're at home. My wouldn't THAT be nice? There's something MOOCs would be good at...
Throwing lectures via a recording at people doesn't work really any better than doing it in person.
The cynicism of the Coursera/Udacity snake-oil salespeople is palpable.
The idea that you can retread bad teachers & bad universities with a few videos and a few lines of Python code was laughable.
Sal Khan of the Khan Academy put at least 10x-100x more thought and insight into his project than Coursera or Udacity.
It's time to pull the plug on the Khan Academy wannabees and go with the real deal.
MOOC is like the iPad - a faddish thing everyone wants to do because it's faddish, without really knowing why. How many people with iPads or other tablets do anything worthwhile with them? Other than watch YouTube videos.
The ideal group work maybe has people learn better.
I've never had a group project in my life where we all learned that well. Usually, a few of us did most or all the work and even when a functional group did happen, the work was distributed so each person had a part of the whole picture and was missing out on the other parts. It only works if people share and want to learn--- when the group finishes the task, hardly anybody is interested in picking up on what parts they were not exposed to. Perhaps one could facilitate the ideal conditions but that is never done and I'd not be surprised if we had little on how to properly facilitate the desired outcome (and I'm not talking policy solutions which is all people ever discuss, having students rank each other etc are policy BS that is extremely limited.) For example, an alternative approach could be to have a series of group assignments which force rotate their roles; or even better... you have them rank each other or you rank them... then next step you purposely put all the weak ones in the worst positions and grade them as a whole... that would force them to help each other!
I wonder how they study the benefits of group work because the studies seem to always back up the theory. If you measure it wrong you'll end up with the same results and it's entirely possible the common techniques used produce biased results until the day somebody proves they have better techniques to study such things... Before that happens, most people will continue to adhere to the conventions they learned in school and even religiously stick to them even after they begin to be dis-proven.
I'm skeptical group work is so great; also, previous experience tells me that even a valid result gets overly generalized and over applied. It's like telling somebody to reboot their computer when they have a problem so then every time their ISP goes down they reboot their computer until the internet works again. I had a client who called me every time (for years) their ISP was down because their website didn't work! I'd have to prove it each time by having Microsoft.com not work either. ("oh, well if microsoft doesn't work either it must be a big problem..." heard that a few times too!) Now imagine having somebody that thick headed in a group project...
The last group study I read was teaching programming. Showing that pairs of students do better. not 1, 3,4,5 but 2 people did best. I didn't feel confident in the results because I wasn't given any idea what they tested them on. Depends on the kind of work and the kind of metric used if working in pairs helped or not. If the test involved nearly the same kind of thing as the assignment then the poor student could just recall and BS their way to a better score from being exposed to the solution, without a greater understanding... it's understanding that is the goal. (or was trends seem to be in the other direction. thinking must be too dangerous.)
Your education SUCKS if you can't tell the difference between an online course and a classroom course. think about that. Also if your high school is offering college, it means your high school sucks and so does the freshman portion of a college education. I remember taking AP and testing out; I took the course anyway-- AP really is a scam... if you don't get it, then your unaware or your education sucked.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I think you shouldn't actually compare it that way. Instead, look at all the people that enrolled and finished. How many of those would otherwise not have gotten the knowledge? This really is more of a game of throwing spaghetti to the wall, see what'll stick.
Whether this is ultimately a good thing, time will have to tell.
Sure, there's differences with the MOOC community. The biggest three in my opinion are that
1) The courses are free with no obligation. Because of this, people can and will sign up for trivial things like looking at part of a single lecture.
2) The environment is different. Because the dedicated school environment is replaced with the same environment where most people play their computer games, and there is no one to crack the whip, and there is no dedicated timeslot in people's schedules, people who intended to take a full course may have trouble motivating themselves to complete it.
3) The completion certificate is worthless. No one gives a crap if you completed a MOOC course or not, and if they did it would be too easy to fake/cheat. And the person taking the course has a pretty good idea of what they know, so to them it's just a pat on the back. Besides this being mildly discouraging in general, it means there is very little reason to do the often boring assignments that would be required to complete the course.
Basically, all the worst problems of a MOOC could be fixed by having a "school" where you went in on a schedule and had someone watching over you. This would provide the motivation and environment some people need to succeed, and because it wouldn't be free it would weed out the people who didn't intend to carry through and provide the motivation of a sunk cost to continue. It would also help the certificate to be worth something, because there is someone to verify that you didn't cheat and that it was, in fact, you who took the class. At this point you're probably ready to complain that doing it this way exactly eliminates every advantage a MOOC was supposed to have. However, this sort of thing would be cheaper than a regular school and would also help legitimize MOOC even for people who do it on their own.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
You say that as though it's a bad thing. A couple of hundred thousand people completing a course is a rather nice achievement.
In other news, learning is hard. What did you expect, that people would magically learn the hardest of subjects simply because it is on t3h internetz? I have done MOOCs and I think it's great. I got the chance to hear some famous professors, read some good textbooks. I never expected it to be simple and I had to abandon some courses, but the final result is a net positive: I finished 2-3 courses I would never have had otherwise. So what if I didn't do the other 3 or 4?
Too much hype leads to disillusionment, as usual, but MOOCs have their place.
If you have a shop and tens of thousands simply window shop but only a few hundred actually buy something you are a screaming success. The non buyers do not cost you anything. Why is a MOOC a failure if you get thousands that participate and hundreds of thousands that simply audit or don't even go past the first few videos. They are working them out but there is so much content now out there in the interwebs which can help people learn if they want to, it is a screaming success. Don't forget most people, say 95% simply need bread and circuses. The remainder now have access to awesome content whereas they normally wouldn't. It is a WIN WIN WIN scenario.
There will be no revolution in education until there is a revolution in learning theory. The current state of learning theory is still a big question mark. While there are adherents to the major theories (e.g., behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism), many are no longer looking at these theories as "correct." Instead, they are looking at them as tools which can be interchanged based on different contexts. We simply do not know enough about how humans learn to create a revolution in learning.
What we have are people making small changes, sometimes novel but mostly not, and claiming these as revolutionary. Remember when Khan Academy hit the scene a few years ago? It was a "revolution." Everyone jumped on the "flipped classroom" bandwagon. When MOOCs gained their mojo (i.e., the backing of Stanford), they were heralded as the next revolution in education. It was obvious then that they offered nothing new. What could be gained from a MOOC that couldn't be gained from existing textbooks? Nothing. And now we have this.
Yes, yes we do. There is tons literature out there on the use of games in education. Second Life? Yep. Virtual Reality in the '90s? Yep. Educational games in the '80s? Yep. You know what this literature tells us? Gaming shows a slight increase in outcomes under certain circumstances for certain students, but it does not show improvements across all students in all circumstances. Nor does it show a combination of games leads to improvement plus additional improvement.
The problem is that we have a lot of technology people coming in with no background in education. They have no background in educational research. They implement technology in education for technology's sake. They believe the whiz-bang of this "new" fan-dangled will wow students into learning. Education. It doesn't work like that. Just like casual gamers lose interest in games, students lose interesting in the "whiz-bang" aspect of these approaches. Then it simply becomes drudgery.
So from what I experienced - I love it. I am full time programmer, dad of 2 elementary school kids. Having a place to go and learn in a structured format on my own time with no $ investment is great. I signed up for about 14 courses. Completed 8. The ones I dropped were not as interesting as I expected. I took model thinking, python, human computer interaction, Ancient Greek history, and several others. Mostly Cs, math, history. All from coursera. Saying something like 90% drop has no meaning. You need to look at the 10% thAt did not and see what they got out if it. It's like saying 90% of ppl that test drove a Tayota (pick model) did not actually buy it. Whopty-freeken-do.
This is interesting. My grandfather (who immigrated to the US as a child about 1890) later took one of the ICS courses in mechanical engineering. I still have the very elaborate diploma, with hand calligraphy. He then got a job with Westinghouse Church Kerr, a large New York construction firm, checking in supplies at sites where they were building foundries, railroad stations, locomotive shops, and the like. He got promoted, travelled widely, and had a decent career.
I also still have the textbooks for things like mathematics and architectural drawing which were part of the ICS course. The undergraduates I teach on a daily basis at Random State University could not cope with them.
I conclude that there are successful alternatives to the regular classroom, and that they've been around for a century. But ... not so many of them, and that they require motivation on the receiving end, and substance on the providing one.
Sebastian Thrun of Udacity mentioned in this article had collateralled with a criminal suspect named gabriele scheler in a series of fascism crimes starting from a Stanford campus atrocity case — Stanford police case number: IR #04-111-0335;Victim: Peter Cao; Criminal Suspect: Gabriele Scheler] which induced a series of fascism crimes and which had endangered human lives; —http://t.cn/SXQ6Rj — From there, there comes a war between fascism and anti-fascism, at this stage, fascism still prevails in our lives; Sebastian Thrun and Gabriele Scheler are just front figures we could see in a fascism circle, there is a whole pack of fascists behind them to cover up their crimes and to retaliate on victims; — Miscarriage of justice is going on --- here is the link to this criminal suspect Gabriele Scheler's website ----http://t.cn/RPbiq5G—
— Such fascism crimes have to be disciplined by laws and such fascists like Gabriele Scheler and Sebastian Thrun and the likes have to be brought to justice; they can’t escape from it :)
A half completed course is not a wasted effort.
...that people insufficiently motivated to attend a school, would suddenly jump at the chance to perform and equal or greater amount of study and work if the entry barrier were reduced.
Mod up parent for truth. I've done many online courses, but I don't do the whole thing. I do what parts interest me or what I need. I also jump between courses. If something is hard listen to lectures on the same topic in other courses until I understand it. Since there's no piece of paper at the end and no need to prove myself to potential employers the usual Test BS is crap. OP's article worries me because it might sink what is a very good thing but which OP doesn't understand because it doesn't fit his own ideas about old school lectures.
This whole line about "disappointing course completion numbers" is total BS. Online courses are a whole different beast than bricks and mortar ivy building courses. If I pay $1000+ to be in a course, I am going to plan my life around it and damn well show up and try hard. But if I see some free and interesting course online that has exactly zero consequences for withdrawal then I am going to sign up on the slightest of whims and figure out if I have time when the course starts. Also if the course annoys me in the slightest, then I will have probably signed up for 6 other interesting courses that I could try on for size. Also other factors can impose. For instance I was recently taking a really cool mathematical thinking course and lost my internet connection shortly before I finished an assignment. I would have aced the assignment and thus was really ticked off. With that huge honkin' zero on my score it burned my inner perfectionist who then decided that I would just take the course again in the future.
I could come up with 20 more reasons as to why I might sign up for yet not complete a course. But none of the above reasons diminish that these are great courses and those that I have completed have vastly improved those areas of my knowledge. Then there are courses such as those offered by MIT and Stanford which I didn't "complete" in that there was nothing to submit or be tested on. I watched the videos and did the recommended work. Again great knowledge was gained. Also depending upon the tracking they do, they may have seen me dip my toes into the first video or two of many courses. It is less that I didn't complete them then I really didn't take them.
Also as I take more and more of these courses I can see that they are starting to really get into a groove. The pacing of the material is becoming more even the associated work is in sync with the lectures, and the group forum stuff is becoming usable.
Really what I have been waiting for is that some major institution will (for a reasonable fee) actually give credit to the students who take a course (not just a whole program). This truly will be the leap that makes these courses a substantive part of modern education.
Where I originally thought(and still do) this leap would take place in an area aimed at highschool students who want to leap into University level material while still in highschool. The idea would be that a smattering of first year courses would be offered and that highschool students who are presently attending third rate institutions would have the opportunity to grow beyond the rats' nest of an education they were being offered and show major institutions that they have the will and the ability to go beyond the crap school that they attend.
The second group that I thought were perfect for online educations were those adults who for whatever reason were not able to attend university or other higher education and want to achieve some real certificate that would allow them to better their employment. An interesting example that occurred to me would be a twist on a degree. The idea is that the vast majority of the degree would be online at low cost and done at whatever speed the student could make time for. But that interspersed would be those real courses (at a normal cost) that require physical attendance. I see this applying to many degrees including an engineering degree.
This last could also apply to trade schools where a student would master the theoretical and then attend whatever physical classes that are required. For many adults stuck with a poorer education than their bright minds could otherwise handle 10 year degree programs would still be very attractive.
So the goal should not necessarily be some potentially unneeded replacement of existing higher education but a reaching out to make a higher education available to anyone who wants it for whatever reason. This would be a truly lofty goal and achieving it would not rate well by traditional metrics.
... I'd hardly call it a failure.
But a lot was learned about internet education....
A good MOOC is harder to do than authoring a common textbook
and there are thousands directly involved being critical.
The most difficult part is the teaching assistants that make things work.
A MOOC quickly exhausts the ranks of teaching assistant talent and
taxes the normal teaching assistant pool with different tools and forces
them to interact in low leverage ways. The professor high leverage
but the middleware as it were is under provisioned for the extreme
fan out of a MOOC.
They will be back... changed but ultimately the extreme leverage potential
will be realized.
Now where is my source for BSD learn?
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
"Unfortunately, half of those students didn't even watch a single lecture"
-- I guess, it's the same phenomenon as with gym memberships and exercise equipment. Most people who sign up for a gym don't attend. Most people who buy a treadmill or some other exercise gizmo, never touch it after the first few days.
Where is the evidence that MOOC:s are failing? There are not a shred of evidence in the article. There are a number of strawman arguments based on made up goals that education doesn't have.
There are no evidence that people that complete courses get more out of their education that does that don't. The goal of education are not to produce diplomas.
Also the mayor MOOC site are indian NPTEL. Millions use that one.
Personally i have a dozen incomplete MOOC courses that have helped me to get results in my job. I have made lots of cash out of watching only the parts of a MOOC course that I need. If that's a failure then what the **** do we measure success with? Toilet paper from Harvard thats useless in real life?
There have been a number of studies recently that proves that formal education are a failure. It doesn't matter if you go to school or just read books at home. You have as much chance to become successful in life.
So no I discard this bullshit that MOOC:s are failing. Completion rates are no measure of success. It's a fabricated goal with no actual value.
And by the way the success rate of udacity courses are at the level of uni courses so you don't even have your facts straight. The numbers you are using are old. But those numbers don't mean shit so it doesn't matter.
Classrooms are regimented environments where students are driven to perform precisely because 95% would rather not.
Then there is the 5% who do everything we can to learn regardless of whether we are in a classroom or not. Coursera et al are "failures" precisely because they forgot this simple truth. You can't expect the average person to pursue knowledge because the average person isn't interested in learning much of anything. This becomes even more true the further to the left you travel on the bell curve. Can't sell music to people who can't hear, and you can't sell knowledge to people who can't learn.
I've made expansive use of the resources available through coursera, udacity, kahn academy, and O'Reilly Safari (which isn't free). Saylor Academy can also be good, but their stuff is hit and miss. The overwhelming majority of their courses are cobbled together from free stuff available online, can tend to be short on comprehensiveness, and often the external resources they try to use disappear.
I've not completed every MOOC course mind you, but I've taken from theses courses the things I found useful and have been able to apply them in my work. The Databases course from Jennifer Widom at Stanford is a good example of this. The calculus videos available from NYU, UCLA and MIT are another example. I'd forgotten most of what I'd learned years ago and these videos, combined with my old copy of Stewart's Calculus 5e, allowed me to brush up enough to tackle Calc-II for credit.
But then I'm part of the small percentage of people who don't have to be coerced into pursuing knowledge that will empower me to create value.
MOOCs and other similar resources are "failures" for the average person for the same reason that 99.9% of television programming is comprised of brain-dead idiocy: Most people don't want anything more. The History channel used to have shows about history. Now they have shows about pawn shops and aliens. Cause that is the crap people want to watch. You have to REALLY go out of your way to find anything worth watching. CPAN has Book-TV, but only on the weekends. There is sometimes good stuff on PBS, but not often.
I expect that were they to take some of the mooc courses and re-structure them into sections that could be measured independently, they'd find at least people like me who are interested in learning are targeting our efforts and attentions towards those sub-topics we find most useful to know in a given course.
One of the other things that is a problem with the current MOOC set-up is that they're time based. Most moocs should be set up to allow students to proceed at their own pace, to hop off and on so to speak. and like I've said to deal with the various sections of the course independently of the other sections.
Of course all of this is kind of irrelevant given that Coursera and the rest are there to try and monetize what they're offering and put it forth as a competitor to brick-and-mortar schooling. Can't really do that when 95% of the public won't actually complete any courses.
I've signed up for lots of MOOCs just to check out what is being covered, or what has changed since I took a class in college. I've also finished a couple of MOOCS that I thought were useful. I've also registered for MOOCs just so I can download the course materials to go over someday when I have spare time. I wouldn't count the times I didn't participate and finish the course as failures, I was just using the class in a different way.
Yet animationmentor.com works just fine. Why? They offer specific training to a specific field, they teach all around the world, they have scheduled online classes using videochat technology, a tight curriculum with deadlines, they have scheduled mentor sessions with the best exerts in the field and they have anual student meetups and regional group meetups.
What's the lesson?
Don't just throw a bunch of material online and expect magic to happen. You have to take care of your courses and student either way. The only thing that's different is that you can save considerable operation costs on buildings, facilities ans such and can inlcude students from all around the planet without them having to relocate to your school.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
The classroom is a bit like democracy: the worst system we have, except for all of the other systems we have tried. At any learning conference, or talking to any learning professional, you'll hear the words "the classroom sucks" at some point. Hated because of its assembly-line heritage, and "captive audiences". However those properties may be its strong point: it still seems the best way to educate large groups of people, and in some cases, capturing an audience is the one way to make sure they pay attention. Not every kid is going to be interested in mandatory material.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I've followed three online courses. One I completed and did all the assignments. Two where I watched all the material but did not attempt the assignments (one required I rigged up a video camera to submit; could not be bothered).
Quite frankly, I got what I wanted out of these courses. So how is this a failure?
I have to balance effort with other commitments. I trust I am not the only one. Signing up is cheap. I've signed up for a few more but other real life took precedent. No big deal.
On the other hand, I don't see online courses replacing traditional educational settings but that was pretty naive to being with.
So: nothing to see here. Yawn!
As was stated in a podcast -- http://www.econtalk.org/archiv... -- failure to finish doesn't mean much.
If you can get what you came for after a few hours, or after doing 90% of the course, why bother to go on? You got value from it.
And if you quit after a quick look, is that a bug or a feature? Do people always attend every university they visit? Does people ever drop a class when they realize after a session or two that it isn't going to work for them?
There may not be a "right" metaphor for this, but if there is, it's probably not related to academia.
A MOOC is more like a library book than a college class. You're not obligated to complete what you start, and it's silly to suggest that not completing it is some kind of "failure".
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
I have signed up for several MOOCs. Paid for a couple to get a Cert. Not a lot of money, but I found it to be a minor motivation, not wasting my money. But, that is me. Of the ten I started, I didn't last through the second lecture on three or four, completed three, and dropped out in the middle of the rest. I don't see a problem with that. It is difficult to assess the quality of the course or instructor. There are no upper classmen to ask, no reviews to scan, so you start in the dark. The better MOOC sites will have higher retention rates as the industry matures. I have found the business classes at Wharton to be well done. I started several programming classes, and found them all poorly done. Dummies Guides have been better for me.
The criticism in the article is unwarranted and self serving. You could apply the same methodology to books, games, or Community College classes with similar results. There is a type of person who wants to learn and better themselves. In the US, it tends to be immigrants. The majority of the poor in America seem to be OK with their lot, as they do not want to help themselves for the most part. But, there is also a continual churn at the level of 'millionaire', so clearly some people are motivated to improve their lot. With the way academia is managed, it is very difficult to use college for that mobility. MOOCs is a good alternative. And, no student debt and no closed 'dining clubs' or frats to crack.
Mate, I come to read an article about MOOC and their failures and what I read is a stupid and unrelated pile of shit about who cool it would be to learn shit with the Occulus Drift. Fucking hell mate, what a waste of my time.
-- 29A the number of the Beast
The major problem with online learning is that 99% of them are lectures. Even when I was in school, I'd just read the textbook during lectures; I learn better from textbooks than I do from lecture videos, and we all know how dry textbooks are. Now something interactive and engaging? That would be fun. Even break the material into bite-sized text chunks, or maybe infographics, with regular quizzes, and it would be better than the current "stare at a video of a guy lecturing for an hour".
Coursera and Udacity, two of the most prominent online learning hubs, have seen about 8 million enrollments in the past few years. Unfortunately, half of those students didn't even watch a single lecture, and only a few hundred thousand completed the course they signed up for.
They are looking at this all wrong. Don't focus on the completion percentage. I've signed up for maybe 20 classes, attempted roughly 8 of them, and completed 4. But don't look at that as 1/5 completion. If I had needed to make a major commitment, I wouldn't have signed up for any of them. So see it as 4 classes completed that I otherwise wouldn't have done at all.
No, they are not. Most MOOC are actually just recorded college or university courses and of course they are modelled after the classroom. Udacity on the other hand do not have schedules but self-paced study, you can start and finish your courses whenever it pleases you. That works a lot better with those of us that have a job.
After all this effort you get the same value that university courses gives you and that are far from useless for job purposes: you get skills. I think you are implying that college credit or an university degree are nog useless for job purpose but thats where you are wrong. Several independent studies have shown that they make no difference. If you know your shit you will get jobs and if you don't you will not get jobs. No fancy paper are going to change that.
And for the last paragraph that are very true. However remember that what you usually get are recorded college couses, and you get exactly the same if you actually go to college. Some lectuers are exemplary and you do not have to do anything but listen and you will have a great experience. But most are horrible and you need to read the books and consume other sources in order to pass the course. Thats college/university for you. But the advantage with MOOCs are that you get to pause and find more info, then return to the lecture. You may even quit, do a course that better prepare you for the one you are doing, and resume where you quit. You can't do that in college.
And most imporantly; brings hard cash.
Which is a side effect of enrolling everyone. But first of all that statement do not apply to everyone that enroll in MOOC:s. For those that it do apply to, I am willing to bet that no one that have watched more than one lecture returns to such habits without having learned something that are useful to them in that kind of life.
Do you belive that A-grade students don't watch TV/netflix, go out drinking, play games, etc? Well you must have been one of those MOOC students that never went to college. :)
And finally you make it sound that poeple that goes to those top schools have a greater chance to become top programmers than thse that stay home and learn by themselves. Thats false to the point that it's a damn lie. There have been a number of studies showing that this is not the case. Top university graduates do NOT have better careers then those that never goes to college. In fact they are LESS successful - probably becase they spend more time doing bullwhit that have no value in the real world. Like preparing for and taking tests, participating in sports for credit/stependiums etc. And not being able to fast-forward boring lectures to save time.
No, because there are no such research. Recent studies have shown that there are no advantages of classroom environment as compared to self-studies. Books, TV:s and correspondance courses have all tried to replace it and successfully so. Well books have. TV/DVD don't really have the content that books have, and correspondance courses just gives you some bullshit papers. Degrees are useless and thats the most a correspondance course will give you.
Classrooms will be around as long as people will coninue to scam others into believing that they are worth something. So wil ponzi schemes. Being around does not mean better, and failing to be around doesn't mean something is less useful.
These MOOC don't come with any college credits so folks don't bother with them. Also, many see free as having no value. What will work better is MAOOC: Massive Almost Open Online Courses. Charge a small fee and folks will value the courses more...especially when they can collect credits after completion.
Putting "the bottom line" under such harsh scrutiny is the wrong way to look at MOOCs. They are an opportunity for anybody with the time and discipline to learn things alongside others interested in learning the same subjects without the need for scholarships or high GPAs. The people there are going to be considerably more interested in learning the material rather than trying to complete a degree in the name of high incomes or not shaming their family, kind of like the way university was intended to be before society told us we needed a good education in order to not be lower class citizens. I sign up for interesting MOOCs from time to time, and if the material is too difficult or I do not have the time to complete the lectures/assignments I may not pass them, but I may have still learned very useful things from the course or otherwise enjoyed the use of my time.
Rather than looking at the 4 million that didn't attend the class or the other 3.5 million that attempted it but didn't pass, I would look with great optimism at the whopping 400,000 that were willing and able to run the gauntlet. In the big picture it sounds like MOOCs are still touching a hell of a lot of people.
I took the introduction to artificial intelligence course while he was still at Stanford and they tried this MOOC thing there for the first time. I completed it but didnt take any exam. Afterwards, I heard that he was so excited by the whole MOOC thing that he decided to quit his tenure and go to Udacity. I remember thinking at the time that he was being extremely naive in quiting a position at Stanford for something like this, and really got the impression from his video statements that he was being duped, in a way, by Udacity, who likely probably promised him that this was something BIG! Yes, it could have been, but quitting your day job after the first course is a bit drastic.
"Everyone knows that vi vi vi is the number of the beast" -- Richard Stallman