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I agree. Coursera's approach seems to capture the worst of both worlds of traditional and online ed. It lacks the live lecture and person-to-person contact of a

I agree. Coursera's approach seems to capture the worst of both worlds of traditional and online ed. It lacks the live lecture and person-to-person contact of a traditional college course. Yet, it maintains the timeboxed approach of traditional ed, which exists chiefly to provide simultaneity, to scale real-life human contact to lecture-hall size. Now I realize that some aspects of the way some courses are run require simultaneity. Things like human-powered grading, by TAs or peers. But they don't have to be designed that way. I've taken Coursera courses that are largely machine graded. For those, there doesn't seem to be any real reason why the courses are timeboxed. And even for courses where this is difficult to design around, it seems like it should be possible to tighten the iteration cycle.

ghaff 11y ago
I'm not sure "live lecture" is a unique positive of a traditional college course, at least if by live lecture you mean room of multi-hundred people. In fact, I'd argue that this aspect is one thing that MOOCs can handle very well. Of course, it's also something that remote learning has been able to handle well at least since the VCR was created. I'd argue that the other thing that MOOCs can do well is automated grading when that's appropriate for the material. What MOOCs do very badly is peer interactions whether for discussions or grading. Part of it's scale. Part of it's the vast differences in the levels and expectations of the participants. Of course, as you say, it's precisely for these reasons that we force courses to provide simultaneity.
brudgers 11y ago
I've taken a number of Coursera courses. The format works better for some courses than others. The key is that there is a recognizable student cohort and that the students are enthusiastically engaged in live discussions. That tends to happen less in the fifth offering when the primary instructor has moved on to other things. Anyway, there's pedagogical theory that favors time boxing [and some that doesn't]. Coursera is opinionated in the matter. That's not a controversial opinion in higher education circles upon which Coursera styles itself and from which it draws it's educators.
- acjohnson55 11y ago
  I'd be interested in reading about that theory, if you have any good resources. I assumed it was for pragmatic reasons. I wonder if the theories consider a context of the opportunities the Internet would create, or if they assume an offline context.
repsilat 11y ago
> ... worst of both worlds ... timeboxed approach Just to provide the other side of the story, I've done about a dozen MOOCs (mostly through Coursera) and I'm most of the way through Georgia Tech's online masters program. Having to make progress every week is contributes a lot to me actually finishing these courses. The Udacity courses I've signed up for never get touched because there's no urgency. Ditto the textbooks on my shelf that I keep meaning to go through, and the Open Yale and MIT OCW courses I've bookmarked... I obviously have the time, but unless there's a threat of "Do it now or it's gone" I'll probably go and watch TV when I get home from work.
- acjohnson55 11y ago
  I think that's fine, but if the urgency is manufactured, I'd argue that it should be an additional feature to provide that urgency, rather than the default. I'm the other side of the coin. I may start off on schedule, but once life intervenes and I fall behind, and I've gotten a couple zeros, I'm like why bother catching up? As a result, I've only successfully finished one out of the 6 or 7 Coursera courses I've started.

ghaff 11y ago

I'm not sure "live lecture" is a unique positive of a traditional college course, at least if by live lecture you mean room of multi-hundred people. In fact, I'd argue that this aspect is one thing that MOOCs can handle very well. Of course, it's also something that remote learning has been able to handle well at least since the VCR was created. I'd argue that the other thing that MOOCs can do well is automated grading when that's appropriate for the material. What MOOCs do very badly is peer interactions whether for discussions or grading. Part of it's scale. Part of it's the vast differences in the levels and expectations of the participants. Of course, as you say, it's precisely for these reasons that we force courses to provide simultaneity.

brudgers 11y ago

I've taken a number of Coursera courses. The format works better for some courses than others. The key is that there is a recognizable student cohort and that the students are enthusiastically engaged in live discussions. That tends to happen less in the fifth offering when the primary instructor has moved on to other things. Anyway, there's pedagogical theory that favors time boxing [and some that doesn't]. Coursera is opinionated in the matter. That's not a controversial opinion in higher education circles upon which Coursera styles itself and from which it draws it's educators.

acjohnson55 11y ago
I'd be interested in reading about that theory, if you have any good resources. I assumed it was for pragmatic reasons. I wonder if the theories consider a context of the opportunities the Internet would create, or if they assume an offline context.

repsilat 11y ago

> ... worst of both worlds ... timeboxed approach Just to provide the other side of the story, I've done about a dozen MOOCs (mostly through Coursera) and I'm most of the way through Georgia Tech's online masters program. Having to make progress every week is contributes a lot to me actually finishing these courses. The Udacity courses I've signed up for never get touched because there's no urgency. Ditto the textbooks on my shelf that I keep meaning to go through, and the Open Yale and MIT OCW courses I've bookmarked... I obviously have the time, but unless there's a threat of "Do it now or it's gone" I'll probably go and watch TV when I get home from work.

acjohnson55 11y ago
I think that's fine, but if the urgency is manufactured, I'd argue that it should be an additional feature to provide that urgency, rather than the default. I'm the other side of the coin. I may start off on schedule, but once life intervenes and I fall behind, and I've gotten a couple zeros, I'm like why bother catching up? As a result, I've only successfully finished one out of the 6 or 7 Coursera courses I've started.