4 ms·

MOOCs are the McDonalds-ification of education. It's disgusting honestly. Western Capitalism is utterly failing to provide a decent, affordable secondary educat

MOOCs are the McDonalds-ification of education. It's disgusting honestly. Western Capitalism is utterly failing to provide a decent, affordable secondary education even to its relatively privileged middle class, so instead they try to convince us that watching a few videos is a decent substitute. We know how capital views education, just get a service job and watch the horrific training videos. That's what Khan Academy is for aspiring skilled laborers. Note that the conclusion is "the credentialling problem has to be solved". Credentials are an attempt to commodify learning. So instead of pesky B.S.'s and M.A.'s you'll get some print-at-home Happy Meal prize. No thanks. According to The Atlantic, it would cost $62B/year to make state colleges tuition free. Last month it was revealed that the Pentagon covered up a report showing how they failed to save $125B over 5 years simply in bureaucratic waste. So while The Economist is telling us how watching videos online is a reasonable alternative to a university education, the kind of funding that could revolutionize American higher education is basically pocket change to the War-makers. The rush to online education is just one more way Capitalism is hollowing out the United States. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/heres-exactly-how-much-the-government-would-have-to-spend-to-make-public-college-tuition-free/282803/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/heres-ex... https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/pentagon-buries-evidence-of-125-billion-in-bureaucratic-waste/2016/12/05/e0668c76-9af6-11e6-a0ed-ab0774c1eaa5_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/pentagon-burie...

geomark 10y ago
Have you ever taken a MOOC? A quality one, like Andew Ng's Machine Learning, or Data Analysis and Statistical Inference from Duke.
- SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
  I did Andrew Ng's machine learning MOOC course. It was very good for a MOOC, and better than my worst university classes, but I'm hesitant to say it was even as good as an average university course. I don't think my education would have been as good entirely composed of such classes, but I'm willing to admit some of that might be preference, educational style I was raised with, etc. However, it seemed much lighter and less demanding than Id expect from an actual university ML class.
- wbillingsley 10y ago
  Some of them are good. But I doubt people will look back on their MOOC-taking years with quite the same level of nostalgia and camaraderie as their college years...
  - jononor 10y ago
    Not that I see that as a big problem, but - as long as the social component is strong enough, I don't see why not. I sometimes get nostalgic for the times I played e-sports competitively (Battlefield 2).
edthrowaway2222 10y ago
Tertiary education is already a commodity -- the process by which that commodity is attained is simply becoming more efficient.
- SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
  McDonalds isn't merely a more "efficient" burger, and that's the point here. Cutting substance in favor of cutting price (or being "efficient") has been a disaster in American culture -- from food to education.
  - jononor 10y ago
    What key substance of education is being cut with a MOOC? And how can we minimize it?
    - SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
      Interactive lessons and Socratic style teaching, for starters. My best courses were all relatively small (10-20 people) and based around guided discovery. Technology could replicate some of that, but there are two problems for scaling -- it requires an interactive teacher that can respond not only to right answers, but wrong ones, and the group size cannot become too large. So you could do it online, but the 'M' in MOOC gets in the way. Then there's the less class focused aspects -- office hours, homework groups, meeting classmates, etc. Some of this is replicated online, bit it would take dozens of emails or forum posts to replicate 30 minutes of one-on-one discussion with a professor (or even classmate). Much of the value in my education came out of study sessions and being exposed to other people's understandings and interpretations and needing to learn to explain my own. Small study groups using online collaboration tools (eg, voip and whiteboard apps) help with that, but MOOCs don't have the same tendancy to encourage that interaction that real classes do (and I'm not sure I buy online is the same as in person -- and I say that having worked remote before).
      - kxyvr 10y ago
ig1 10y ago
For the majority of university students the learning process is largely composed of sitting in large lecture halls with minimal interactions being lectured by someone who'd much rather be doing research than teaching. Why precisely is that superior to a video of a lecture delivered by someone who's focus is teaching ?
- posterboy 10y ago
  *whose (i'm so sorry (for being off-topic))
joekrill 10y ago
Can you offer any actual _evidence_ that makes this "disgusting", or even a bad thing? I have a hard time believing that making any sort of education free is bad -- let alone disgusting.
garysieling 10y ago
Those "horrific training videos" are usually made to comply with some regulatory or insurance requirement, as opposed to being actual training. In this issue of the economist they indicate that most of the people who are using MooCs are are already working and using them to increase their skills. While the people marketing MooCs may pitch it as a replacement for school, I don't think that's the reality for most people. Consequently I would suggest thinking of the "credentials problem" as how you demonstrate a new skill to an employer - I the answer may be not be a certificate at all, e.g. maybe a portfolio site, side project, etc.

geomark 10y ago

Have you ever taken a MOOC? A quality one, like Andew Ng's Machine Learning, or Data Analysis and Statistical Inference from Duke.

SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
I did Andrew Ng's machine learning MOOC course. It was very good for a MOOC, and better than my worst university classes, but I'm hesitant to say it was even as good as an average university course. I don't think my education would have been as good entirely composed of such classes, but I'm willing to admit some of that might be preference, educational style I was raised with, etc. However, it seemed much lighter and less demanding than Id expect from an actual university ML class.
wbillingsley 10y ago
Some of them are good. But I doubt people will look back on their MOOC-taking years with quite the same level of nostalgia and camaraderie as their college years...
- jononor 10y ago
  Not that I see that as a big problem, but - as long as the social component is strong enough, I don't see why not. I sometimes get nostalgic for the times I played e-sports competitively (Battlefield 2).

edthrowaway2222 10y ago

Tertiary education is already a commodity -- the process by which that commodity is attained is simply becoming more efficient.

SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
McDonalds isn't merely a more "efficient" burger, and that's the point here. Cutting substance in favor of cutting price (or being "efficient") has been a disaster in American culture -- from food to education.
- jononor 10y ago
  What key substance of education is being cut with a MOOC? And how can we minimize it?
  - SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
    Interactive lessons and Socratic style teaching, for starters. My best courses were all relatively small (10-20 people) and based around guided discovery. Technology could replicate some of that, but there are two problems for scaling -- it requires an interactive teacher that can respond not only to right answers, but wrong ones, and the group size cannot become too large. So you could do it online, but the 'M' in MOOC gets in the way. Then there's the less class focused aspects -- office hours, homework groups, meeting classmates, etc. Some of this is replicated online, bit it would take dozens of emails or forum posts to replicate 30 minutes of one-on-one discussion with a professor (or even classmate). Much of the value in my education came out of study sessions and being exposed to other people's understandings and interpretations and needing to learn to explain my own. Small study groups using online collaboration tools (eg, voip and whiteboard apps) help with that, but MOOCs don't have the same tendancy to encourage that interaction that real classes do (and I'm not sure I buy online is the same as in person -- and I say that having worked remote before).
    - kxyvr 10y ago

ig1 10y ago

For the majority of university students the learning process is largely composed of sitting in large lecture halls with minimal interactions being lectured by someone who'd much rather be doing research than teaching. Why precisely is that superior to a video of a lecture delivered by someone who's focus is teaching ?

posterboy 10y ago
*whose (i'm so sorry (for being off-topic))

joekrill 10y ago

Can you offer any actual _evidence_ that makes this "disgusting", or even a bad thing? I have a hard time believing that making any sort of education free is bad -- let alone disgusting.

garysieling 10y ago

Those "horrific training videos" are usually made to comply with some regulatory or insurance requirement, as opposed to being actual training. In this issue of the economist they indicate that most of the people who are using MooCs are are already working and using them to increase their skills. While the people marketing MooCs may pitch it as a replacement for school, I don't think that's the reality for most people. Consequently I would suggest thinking of the "credentials problem" as how you demonstrate a new skill to an employer - I the answer may be not be a certificate at all, e.g. maybe a portfolio site, side project, etc.