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The concept of dropping out will remain an issue until they stop talking about how many students are enrolled.

VLM 11y ago
The entire metric system is broken top to bottom. Wobbleblob wrote about the joy of learning, I feel the same, although I get my fix listening to audiobook lectures for the last quarter century or so. A lot of people like wobbleblob and I write about the joy of consuming quality educational resources. Nobody writes about the joy of assignments and exams. If you think its unusually rare that I'm listening to a university lecture series about Russian Literature on my commutes right now, imagine how even rarer it is to find someone who enjoys writing exams about Russian Literature. You might get a hundred thousand people like me to sign up for the good parts, the lectures. Good luck getting a thousand of us who are really bored to jump thru the hoops. That's the fundamental problem with the MOOC market now, the metrics for success are things the consumers don't care about. I enjoyed the Scala class videos from a couple years ago, learned a little too. Unfortunately the metrics for success on the corporate side are meaningless such as how many signed up, how many jumped thru all the hoops in the limited amount of time, and the ratio of the above. Until the consumer goals and the corporate metric goals align, if ever, there will be endless hand wringing articles about how awful the metric results are and why won't the consumers cooperate? There is an even worse problem in that a good class sabotages its own metrics. If my lecture series is any good at all, if its motivational, inspirational, exciting, when I'm done listening I'm going to read some Dostoevsky, not fill out some boring quiz or write an exam essay so someone can get a good metric result and I can get ... nothing?
sanderjd 11y ago
Totally agree. Both "enrollment" and "drop-out" are anachronistic when discussing online education.

VLM 11y ago

The entire metric system is broken top to bottom. Wobbleblob wrote about the joy of learning, I feel the same, although I get my fix listening to audiobook lectures for the last quarter century or so. A lot of people like wobbleblob and I write about the joy of consuming quality educational resources. Nobody writes about the joy of assignments and exams. If you think its unusually rare that I'm listening to a university lecture series about Russian Literature on my commutes right now, imagine how even rarer it is to find someone who enjoys writing exams about Russian Literature. You might get a hundred thousand people like me to sign up for the good parts, the lectures. Good luck getting a thousand of us who are really bored to jump thru the hoops. That's the fundamental problem with the MOOC market now, the metrics for success are things the consumers don't care about. I enjoyed the Scala class videos from a couple years ago, learned a little too. Unfortunately the metrics for success on the corporate side are meaningless such as how many signed up, how many jumped thru all the hoops in the limited amount of time, and the ratio of the above. Until the consumer goals and the corporate metric goals align, if ever, there will be endless hand wringing articles about how awful the metric results are and why won't the consumers cooperate? There is an even worse problem in that a good class sabotages its own metrics. If my lecture series is any good at all, if its motivational, inspirational, exciting, when I'm done listening I'm going to read some Dostoevsky, not fill out some boring quiz or write an exam essay so someone can get a good metric result and I can get ... nothing?

sanderjd 11y ago

Totally agree. Both "enrollment" and "drop-out" are anachronistic when discussing online education.