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!"

Comments

Re:Call me an old guy with a short attention span

[ClayDowling]

Amen Brother! If I wanted to sit through a few hours of bad powerpoint every week, I wouldn't have gone into engineering.

After getting burned on a couple of online courses, I discovered the affordable and approachable Dover books on mathematics and computing. They seem to fit my attention span and learning style better, where I might have to spend a lot of time thinking about a short passage or an equation to understand what's important about it. They're also easier to read when I'm on a plane or at the gym.