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Online courses I've taken have been much better than in-person courses. Online courses have several advantages: 1) The lecturer can prepare a video, refine it
by grumple 6y ago
Online courses I've taken have been much better than in-person courses.
Online courses have several advantages:
1) The lecturer can prepare a video, refine it, and have others review it before it makes it to the students. Errors can be corrected and annotations can be added.
2) Quizzes, tests, and projects can be effectively randomized to dissuade cheating (see coursera courses).
3) Other resources can be linked directly in the material.
4) Written information for the courses can be intermixed with video lectures.
5) Asking questions is easy and doesn't disrupt the rest of the class.
6) You learn at your own rate.
Most of my more challenging courses at university (math and engineering) did not have any discussion anyway, and the instruction was extremely poor. If Khan Academy or Coursera had existed at the time, I'd have done much better using those courses than learning from my actual professors.
- swiley 6y agoThat doesn’t sound like an undergrad online course. Universities could make courses with all of those features but IME and looking at what my friends have seen in theirs they don’t. I’m not sure if it’s an institutional requirement or if it’s because they know they can get away without it and don’t bother.
- hollandheese 6y agoMost of that is because those are hard requirements to fulfill for most professors. Video production is pretty difficult to do well. The university I teach for basically offered no help in that realm in our transition. They basically just told us we had to transition to online in two days, gave us some bullcrap professional development on how to use Canvas, and then fed us to the wolves. Make sure to blame the university, not the professors. We're trying our best with almost no help.