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Democratizing high quality education. It used to be that the best teachers were available only to a few dozens of privileged students at a time. But now we hav

by Arun2009 8y ago

Democratizing high quality education. It used to be that the best teachers were available only to a few dozens of privileged students at a time. But now we have the technology to scale great pedagogy to reach millions of learners. I also think we ought to move from a push model of education to a pull model, i.e., learners get to pick and choose from a selection of good teachers and progress through various levels at their own pace (and get accredited for their learning). Classroom learning really ought to go or be reduced to very special cases. That we all have to be synchronized on when we are prepared to learn a topic is an outdated concept. MOOCs are an excellent step in this direction, but we really should be doing more. In education, I think we're in a stage similar to where internet search was before google or smart phones were before iphone.

sdan 8y ago
I agree with what you're saying, but MOOCs have showed time and time again that they don't work and people lose attention extremely easy. How is that perpetual problem going to stop?
- dorkwood 8y ago
  Create a MOOC mixed together with that service where people watch you while you work, so that students are held accountable.
- Eridrus 8y ago
  MOOC completion rates are not a good indicator of success. It's ridiculously easy to sign up, so a a lot of low intent people sign up, but these people would never have enrolled in a college for the class and probably didn't plan to actually do the entire course.
- Arun2009 8y ago
  I'd contest your claim that MOOCs "don't work". It's true that only a fraction of those who participate in typical MOOCs complete them (8 - 10%), (https://imgur.com/a/HI4IXbt https://imgur.com/a/HI4IXbt , from "HarvardX and MITx: Four Years of Open Online Courses", https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2889436 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2889436), but a significant fraction (~15-20%) also explore these courses (i.e., they watch 50% or more of lectures). So this means that the MOOCs are reaching around 20-30% of the participants in some significant manner. First of all, is the larger drop out rates really a problem? I'd argue that the option to drop out of a course if you feel that it doesn't serve your needs right now is itself valuable. This means that you're free to spend your time in ways that are more useful to you. Also, a large number of those taking the MOOCs are themselves teachers. This means that the high quality of pedagogy that MOOCs can deliver will have cascading effects through educators who use them to upgrade their own skills. How to improve the effectiveness of MOOCs? There are plenty of things we can do, too many in fact to go into in one post. A few keys areas that I can see are (a) pedagogy (finding great teaching talent and professionally beefing up their performance), (b) affordability (an issue in developing countries primarily), (c) formal accreditation, and (d) a wider selection of courses that form a genuine alternative to the standard university programs. Models that I find incredibly exciting are that of India's IGNOU (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indira_Gandhi_National_Open_University https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indira_Gandhi_National_Open_Un...), NPTEL (https://nptel.ac.in/ https://nptel.ac.in/), and Swayam (https://swayam.gov.in/ https://swayam.gov.in/), all of which issue officially recognized certificates. But unfortunately, as with many things that the Government of India does, the intentions are noble but the execution is mediocre. There's clearly room for players who will "full-ass" what IGNOU set out to do.

sdan 8y ago

I agree with what you're saying, but MOOCs have showed time and time again that they don't work and people lose attention extremely easy. How is that perpetual problem going to stop?

dorkwood 8y ago
Create a MOOC mixed together with that service where people watch you while you work, so that students are held accountable.
Eridrus 8y ago
MOOC completion rates are not a good indicator of success. It's ridiculously easy to sign up, so a a lot of low intent people sign up, but these people would never have enrolled in a college for the class and probably didn't plan to actually do the entire course.
Arun2009 8y ago
I'd contest your claim that MOOCs "don't work". It's true that only a fraction of those who participate in typical MOOCs complete them (8 - 10%), (https://imgur.com/a/HI4IXbt https://imgur.com/a/HI4IXbt , from "HarvardX and MITx: Four Years of Open Online Courses", https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2889436 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2889436), but a significant fraction (~15-20%) also explore these courses (i.e., they watch 50% or more of lectures). So this means that the MOOCs are reaching around 20-30% of the participants in some significant manner. First of all, is the larger drop out rates really a problem? I'd argue that the option to drop out of a course if you feel that it doesn't serve your needs right now is itself valuable. This means that you're free to spend your time in ways that are more useful to you. Also, a large number of those taking the MOOCs are themselves teachers. This means that the high quality of pedagogy that MOOCs can deliver will have cascading effects through educators who use them to upgrade their own skills. How to improve the effectiveness of MOOCs? There are plenty of things we can do, too many in fact to go into in one post. A few keys areas that I can see are (a) pedagogy (finding great teaching talent and professionally beefing up their performance), (b) affordability (an issue in developing countries primarily), (c) formal accreditation, and (d) a wider selection of courses that form a genuine alternative to the standard university programs. Models that I find incredibly exciting are that of India's IGNOU (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indira_Gandhi_National_Open_University https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indira_Gandhi_National_Open_Un...), NPTEL (https://nptel.ac.in/ https://nptel.ac.in/), and Swayam (https://swayam.gov.in/ https://swayam.gov.in/), all of which issue officially recognized certificates. But unfortunately, as with many things that the Government of India does, the intentions are noble but the execution is mediocre. There's clearly room for players who will "full-ass" what IGNOU set out to do.