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This. One of the strangest things about the MOOC boom in 2012/13 was the fact that so much of what they were doing already existed. Taking a pre-existing paid

This. One of the strangest things about the MOOC boom in 2012/13 was the fact that so much of what they were doing already existed. Taking a pre-existing paid-for product and giving it away for free is not innovation, especially when you can only give it away for free because of external funding.

debacle 8y ago
Finding a way to provide quality, accredited credit hours for 1/5th of what you'd pay at a community college, and at the same time opening the doors to federal funding dollars, should have been a paramount goal.
- povertyworld 8y ago
  The problem is if it's accredited then instead of just offering reviewed "iterate till you pass" programming projects, they will have to have high stakes "cram and regurgitate" style exams which are a staple of accredited higher ed. If you go for that stuff, why not just enroll in a university somewhere?
  - dooes 8y ago
    That is precisely the conclusion the market has come to, and why they are having issues. Though their target audience is actually the professional working folk.. who don’t have the motivation and time to work on deadlines projects or the willpower to finish non deadlines projects and hw. Overall the business case seems difficult
    - tdhz77 8y ago
      Dr. David Harpool talks about this in his book survivor college. Basically argues that the market aka the board makes horrible decisions for education. Survivor College https://www.amazon.com/dp/1593300670/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_mYxRCbMQTSQRW https://www.amazon.com/dp/1593300670/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_mY...
    - indigochill 8y ago
      >or the willpower to finish non deadlines projects and hw If I could nitpick this particular point (because I agree with the rest), statistically it's true that the vast majority of online courses aren't finished. But I think, going by my own use of these courses as well as anecdotes from others, this isn't because of a lack of willpower so much as professional working folk primarily being interested in learning a very specific solution-to-a-problem on-demand (exactly the thing Stack Overflow offers) rather than going through an entire course just because lots of other information happens to be bundled with the key information they're actually looking for. There are of course many exceptions. I wanted to learn how hardware works so went through the entire Nand 2 Tetris course start to finish. But that was because independent of my "professional working folk" persona, I was just personally interested in the topic. But I've much more often used online lectures to get me over occasional humps in understanding specific nuggets of information and this is the use case I've heard from everyone else I know who uses online courses.

debacle 8y ago

Finding a way to provide quality, accredited credit hours for 1/5th of what you'd pay at a community college, and at the same time opening the doors to federal funding dollars, should have been a paramount goal.

povertyworld 8y ago
The problem is if it's accredited then instead of just offering reviewed "iterate till you pass" programming projects, they will have to have high stakes "cram and regurgitate" style exams which are a staple of accredited higher ed. If you go for that stuff, why not just enroll in a university somewhere?
- dooes 8y ago
  That is precisely the conclusion the market has come to, and why they are having issues. Though their target audience is actually the professional working folk.. who don’t have the motivation and time to work on deadlines projects or the willpower to finish non deadlines projects and hw. Overall the business case seems difficult
  - tdhz77 8y ago
    Dr. David Harpool talks about this in his book survivor college. Basically argues that the market aka the board makes horrible decisions for education. Survivor College https://www.amazon.com/dp/1593300670/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_mYxRCbMQTSQRW https://www.amazon.com/dp/1593300670/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_mY...
  - indigochill 8y ago
    >or the willpower to finish non deadlines projects and hw If I could nitpick this particular point (because I agree with the rest), statistically it's true that the vast majority of online courses aren't finished. But I think, going by my own use of these courses as well as anecdotes from others, this isn't because of a lack of willpower so much as professional working folk primarily being interested in learning a very specific solution-to-a-problem on-demand (exactly the thing Stack Overflow offers) rather than going through an entire course just because lots of other information happens to be bundled with the key information they're actually looking for. There are of course many exceptions. I wanted to learn how hardware works so went through the entire Nand 2 Tetris course start to finish. But that was because independent of my "professional working folk" persona, I was just personally interested in the topic. But I've much more often used online lectures to get me over occasional humps in understanding specific nuggets of information and this is the use case I've heard from everyone else I know who uses online courses.