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Indeed. I feel a gamefication theme to some of it. Think of the opposite: Socrates had his teachings and live lectures online, with recorded classroom, and f

• visarga 10y ago
  What MOOCs need is deep understanding of human learning, as it relates to specific fields. In other words they need to keep track on a per-user-basis of the level of mastery they have on all the relevant concepts. They need to map out how relevant concepts rely on each other, and be able to make recommendations. It often feels like an avalanche of books, courses, materials - we need simple paths through this mess. We need to keep people right in the sweetspot - not giving them too difficult material, but also not too easy, just right enough to maximize learning. And this perfect gradation of difficulty can be reverse engineered through machine learning over student activity logs. Another area they need to invest in is the practical side. Course takers need more examples, tests, problems and projects. Only by applying the concepts in reality will students gain firm confidence in their abilities. I don't think the "short course" format is the best. It might be better to have a graph of concept nodes, each equipped with its own instructional materials, problems and tests. The graph can be expanded gradually to include more concepts and to reduce the gradient of difficulty for the more problematic ones. People who bang their heads against difficult material and don't grock it might feel discouraged and give up. But if they can build confidence that everything is taught gradually and without too violent jumps in difficulty, they might improve the dropout rate.