11 ms·

> "Nearly everyone recognizes that MOOCs are by and large a failure with ~2% completion rates, but they make us feel good because now it’s the students’ fault

> "Nearly everyone recognizes that MOOCs are by and large a failure with ~2% completion rates, but they make us feel good because now it’s the students’ fault not they’re not learning, not the school’s" I understand the context the author is approaching this from - but it discounts the idea that MOOCs can be used the same way we use books. I've utilized about a dozen different MOOCs and I've _never_ completed a single one of them. Instead I learned the concepts I needed to, maybe completed some test material if it was freely available, and moved on. Some of those MOOCs were gateways into my career as a developer - so they were absolutely vital to me. This again seems to be an issue with measurement/metrics - I don't believe completion rates are worth that much in MOOCs, just like they aren't worth that much in technical books.

d0mine 9y ago
I wonder do MOOCs 2% in absolute numbers exceed the number of students in traditional universities e.g., Coursera had "over 22 millions enrollments" (2014?) http://tdlc.ucsd.edu/about/about-Learning-How-To-Learn.html http://tdlc.ucsd.edu/about/about-Learning-How-To-Learn.html 2% from several millions is more than the number of students enrolled in any UK universities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_universities_in_the_United_Kingdom_by_enrolment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_universities_in_the_Un...
- tsumnia 9y ago
  Its a currently studied phenomena (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-10671-7_4 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-10671-7_...) My personal thought is its the same reason people quit gyms , fail at New Year's Resolutions, or even quit Free-to-Play games. It is difficult to create and maintain habit.
mnx 9y ago
I can also confirm I've had this experience. I learned a lot from MOOCs I never completed. That's why I like Khan Academy's model for educational content - aligned in paths, and with some gamification around completing, but ultimately made to be searchable, and relatively easy to pick up in the middle. And that's how I've used it as well - I probably have only a module or two completed, but I've watched many videos just trying to get a better grasp on one concept that wasn't well enough explained in a book I was using, or just to refresh my recollection.
tsumnia 9y ago
Not knocking your own choices, but its more the backlash to the 2013 "MOOCs are the greatest thing ever! KhanAcademy/EdX/Coursera! Wooo!" Personally, I love them and would love to work with those companies. In fact, when I started teaching, I used many of the aspects I saw MOOCs using in my traditional classrooms. However, there is a truth to the statement. Almost no one finishes a MOOC (some never even log in to take MOOCs they register for), and predictive models can determine whether someone will complete the MOOC as early as the 2nd week (if not sooner). Some people do grab what they want and leave, but that is not the case for everyone. If we then look to justify why bother, its a little hard to warrant hosting costs, etc. if you aren't seeing anything come from it. If I ran a MOOC with a 95% fail rate, how can I label it successful. We are unable to do meaningful research on MOOC strategy effectiveness because we are too busy trying to understand why people never log in in the first place.
- astrodev 9y ago
  > If we then look to justify why bother, its a little hard to warrant hosting costs, etc. if you aren't seeing anything come from it > If I ran a MOOC with a 95% fail rate, how can I label it successful. How is the completion rate a better measure of value added than the absolute number of finishers?
  - austenallred 9y ago
    Both are important. There are multiple questions to be asked. For extremely self motivated people, MOOCS are a win, no doubt. Again, MOOCs are definitely better than no MOOCs. But the promise was that MOOCs can just replace college to a large degree, because the content you get in college will be online. In that instance the question becomes "do MOOCs work for most people?" For what we'll call the "average" person, studies have shown that just isn't the case. Most people don't learn well from MOOCs, unfortunately. Therefore what we're learning is that a non-trivial amount of what makes a college education successful is some combination of the following things that MOOCs don't have: external pressure, scheduled courses, due dates, a community of learners, a physical campus, etc. As such, I view part of the next step to figure out which of those aspects MOOCs are missing that are vital to the mix in order to help average people learn the things they need to know. Traditional education just says all of them are necessary, but I'm not convinced that's the case.
tonyedgecombe 9y ago
I'm not surprised the drop out rate is so high, it's a reflection of the low cost of entry. I'm not sure it means anything.
astrodev 9y ago
Exactly. I completed 5 out of ~50 courses I have ever enrolled in. One of the courses I did not complete was instrumental in getting me into graduate school in a field unrelated to my formal background. Focusing on the completion rates misses the point.
jehlakj 9y ago
Similar experiences here. I get what what I need from a couple of videos and never look back. I wish that lecturers would move to YouTube and structure each lecture as its own instead of having the burden to fit them into a course. For example, if I don’t have the appropriate prerequisite knowledge to understand what I’m currently watching, I should be able to search for and learn it quickly instead of having to browse through intermediate lectures.
SilasX 9y ago
Maybe the problem is in measuring them as sort of an all-or-nothing experience, like nothing happened if you didn't see it all the way through. Perhaps we should be judging progress on the basis of individual modules: did you master the material in this one? Or equivalently, the courses should be smaller and better linked with each other: "this course requires you to have passed one of these other courses...". I think what stops us from using that model is that each course might define its terms differently and assume slightly different pre-requisites such that it's infeasible to teach just one small thing in a way that it can be directly applied to someone else's minicourse.
white-flame 9y ago
The biggest, most idiotic, and most frustrating problem IMO is that most MOOCs are inflexible in their schedule. This model is perfect for self-paced learning and very few serve that. Plus, there are instructors and materials that aren't great, and are more useful for the basic introduction to concepts in the first few lessons, which can then enable self-learning that's more effective than the poorly taught meat & potatoes of the course. (I've finished probably 3-4 MOOCs and didn't finish about the same amount.)

d0mine 9y ago

I wonder do MOOCs 2% in absolute numbers exceed the number of students in traditional universities e.g., Coursera had "over 22 millions enrollments" (2014?) http://tdlc.ucsd.edu/about/about-Learning-How-To-Learn.html http://tdlc.ucsd.edu/about/about-Learning-How-To-Learn.html 2% from several millions is more than the number of students enrolled in any UK universities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_universities_in_the_United_Kingdom_by_enrolment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_universities_in_the_Un...

tsumnia 9y ago
Its a currently studied phenomena (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-10671-7_4 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-10671-7_...) My personal thought is its the same reason people quit gyms , fail at New Year's Resolutions, or even quit Free-to-Play games. It is difficult to create and maintain habit.

mnx 9y ago

I can also confirm I've had this experience. I learned a lot from MOOCs I never completed. That's why I like Khan Academy's model for educational content - aligned in paths, and with some gamification around completing, but ultimately made to be searchable, and relatively easy to pick up in the middle. And that's how I've used it as well - I probably have only a module or two completed, but I've watched many videos just trying to get a better grasp on one concept that wasn't well enough explained in a book I was using, or just to refresh my recollection.

tsumnia 9y ago

Not knocking your own choices, but its more the backlash to the 2013 "MOOCs are the greatest thing ever! KhanAcademy/EdX/Coursera! Wooo!" Personally, I love them and would love to work with those companies. In fact, when I started teaching, I used many of the aspects I saw MOOCs using in my traditional classrooms. However, there is a truth to the statement. Almost no one finishes a MOOC (some never even log in to take MOOCs they register for), and predictive models can determine whether someone will complete the MOOC as early as the 2nd week (if not sooner). Some people do grab what they want and leave, but that is not the case for everyone. If we then look to justify why bother, its a little hard to warrant hosting costs, etc. if you aren't seeing anything come from it. If I ran a MOOC with a 95% fail rate, how can I label it successful. We are unable to do meaningful research on MOOC strategy effectiveness because we are too busy trying to understand why people never log in in the first place.

astrodev 9y ago
> If we then look to justify why bother, its a little hard to warrant hosting costs, etc. if you aren't seeing anything come from it > If I ran a MOOC with a 95% fail rate, how can I label it successful. How is the completion rate a better measure of value added than the absolute number of finishers?
- austenallred 9y ago
  Both are important. There are multiple questions to be asked. For extremely self motivated people, MOOCS are a win, no doubt. Again, MOOCs are definitely better than no MOOCs. But the promise was that MOOCs can just replace college to a large degree, because the content you get in college will be online. In that instance the question becomes "do MOOCs work for most people?" For what we'll call the "average" person, studies have shown that just isn't the case. Most people don't learn well from MOOCs, unfortunately. Therefore what we're learning is that a non-trivial amount of what makes a college education successful is some combination of the following things that MOOCs don't have: external pressure, scheduled courses, due dates, a community of learners, a physical campus, etc. As such, I view part of the next step to figure out which of those aspects MOOCs are missing that are vital to the mix in order to help average people learn the things they need to know. Traditional education just says all of them are necessary, but I'm not convinced that's the case.

tonyedgecombe 9y ago

I'm not surprised the drop out rate is so high, it's a reflection of the low cost of entry. I'm not sure it means anything.

astrodev 9y ago

Exactly. I completed 5 out of ~50 courses I have ever enrolled in. One of the courses I did not complete was instrumental in getting me into graduate school in a field unrelated to my formal background. Focusing on the completion rates misses the point.

jehlakj 9y ago

Similar experiences here. I get what what I need from a couple of videos and never look back. I wish that lecturers would move to YouTube and structure each lecture as its own instead of having the burden to fit them into a course. For example, if I don’t have the appropriate prerequisite knowledge to understand what I’m currently watching, I should be able to search for and learn it quickly instead of having to browse through intermediate lectures.

SilasX 9y ago

Maybe the problem is in measuring them as sort of an all-or-nothing experience, like nothing happened if you didn't see it all the way through. Perhaps we should be judging progress on the basis of individual modules: did you master the material in this one? Or equivalently, the courses should be smaller and better linked with each other: "this course requires you to have passed one of these other courses...". I think what stops us from using that model is that each course might define its terms differently and assume slightly different pre-requisites such that it's infeasible to teach just one small thing in a way that it can be directly applied to someone else's minicourse.

white-flame 9y ago

The biggest, most idiotic, and most frustrating problem IMO is that most MOOCs are inflexible in their schedule. This model is perfect for self-paced learning and very few serve that. Plus, there are instructors and materials that aren't great, and are more useful for the basic introduction to concepts in the first few lessons, which can then enable self-learning that's more effective than the poorly taught meat & potatoes of the course. (I've finished probably 3-4 MOOCs and didn't finish about the same amount.)