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No Film At 11: the Case For the Less-Video-Is-More MOOC
theodp writes: In Why My MOOC is Not Built on Video, GWU's Lorena Barba explains why the Practical Numerical Methods with Python course she and colleagues put together has but one video: "Why didn't we have more video? The short answer is budget and time: making good-quality videos is expensive & making simple yet effective educational videos is time consuming, if not necessarily costly. #NumericalMOOC was created on-the-fly, with little budget. But here's my point: expensive, high-production-value videos are not necessary to achieve a quality learning experience." When the cost of producing an MOOC can exceed $100,000 per course, Barba suggests educators pay heed to Donald Bligh's 1971 observation that "dazzling presentations do not necessarily result in learning." So what would Barba do? "We designed the central learning experience [of #NumericalMOOC] around a set of IPython Notebooks," she explains, "and meaningful yet achievable mini-projects for students. I guarantee learning results to any student that fully engages with these!"
I have never been able to stand more than 5 minutes of a MOOC video before telling myself 'OK, I'll find a proper textbook.'.
I usually have a basic view of the MOOC topic ; at least the textbook allows me to skim it and dig deeper on the points that I'm interested in.
Just sitting at my desk and watching a video is usually boring and requires to watch the complete segment before realising it was not what I was looking for.
The same goes for all these video tutorials : why bother making a 5-min youtube video on some software installation when a one-page text with command lines would be appropriate?
I have never been able to stand more than 5 minutes of a MOOC video before telling myself 'OK, I'll find a proper textbook.'.
You take the words right out of my mouth. There are many subjects that are not well suited to a video presentation; in fact, in my view there are very few subjects that benefit much from combining graphics, talk and soundtrack. Perhaps if you can't appreciate a mathematical subject as it is presented in its dry text form, then it isn't something you are likely to ever understand - the beauty lies in the insight it provides, 'wow factor' should be irrelevant.
I think one of the problems with the video format is that it entices you into being passive; when you read proof in a book, you get stuck from time to time because there are things you don't understand, so you look up the things you don't understand etc, but in a video you are carried on without understanding, and although it is easy enough to stop and rewind, you tend not to because you are passively watching a video. Also, studies have shown that people tend to remember and understand less of presentations involving graphics, text and speaking, because the three forms crowd each other out.
this is the other end of the swing, the pendulum all the way to the right again. Here is what MOOCs do wrong...
One or the other. Massively imbalanced. Without the use of textbooks, students need solid examples and reading created by the course creators. With all that text they need an instructor showing them examples and explaining what can be intimidating to students in more friendly ways.
its not supposed to be aimed at autodidacts, they can teach themselves from books already. Its not supposed to be aimed at college students either, they are already in class setting with access to libraries, instructors, tutors and more.
Keep that in mind, the balance between video and text should really be the higher consideration. Give your students reading to do and reinforce that with good videos explaining what they have read. You don't need 100,000 bucks, money spent does not equal quality instructing. Pay a few real people to do the coursework with you and ask questions as you are filming your lectures, it adds a level of immersion, lets you explain things interactively instead of just lecturing, and lets you know that you are actually teaching (if you use students who are NOT taking your uni courses that is).
Professors are not actors.
Grad students are not actors.
You are not going to come off as hip or cool teaching Python or java or Algebra. What you can do is be a natural person and be entertaining and interesting still, just like in class. Unless you can't, in which case I can't help ya.
The proper response is "Oh sorry, I take this acronym for granted and forgot that general readers may not understand it," not a snide, dickhead response.
Here's an acronym that might benefit you though: LTW
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
The cost of producing a large amount of well-thought out, cohesive, modular, high-visual-quality video is in the labor, not the cost of the tech. What the professor is saying is that she doesn't have the time to write 200 hours of script (or even write out 200 hours worth of detailed notes), record the 200 hours (which'll take more than that to record - no-one can do 200 hours of high-quality video on the first take), go back and edit stuff (even just cutting out uhms & ahs takes long than you think - step 1 will be to re-watch the 200 hours of video to find them :) ), etc, etc.
The $100,000 figure struck me as being weird, as well, but the professor's point is that producing 10 hours of video for each of 20 lessons in addition to all the other course materials is way, way too much to just demand that someone do.
Besides, for stuff like this you mostly want a good book anyways. Something that you can read a short paragraph of, stop and think about for a bit, come back and re-read in order to make sure that you got it, read another paragraph the same way, maybe work through a problem or two. Videos of this would be nice, but they're window-dressing around the main event.
> Perhaps if you can't appreciate a mathematical subject as it is presented in its dry text form, then it isn't something you are likely to ever understand
I dunno. I find animations of mathematical concepts to be quite effective in communicating the intuition behind them, much better than text.
Perhaps, you just haven't seen good use of multimedia.
> I think one of the problems with the video format is that it entices you into being passive
I prefer videos over lectures. The reason is that I can pause them, replay them, for technical stuff, try things out.
You might say: Well, you can do that with a book. For me, the lecture uses a more approachable language than the more formal format of the book (good for further exploration and lookups). A video demonstration is just more compact and more effective because it is multi-modal, than the full description in text.
> because the three forms crowd each other out.
In a well-done presentation, they are complementary... multi-modal.