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This seems like terrible news :( After the focus on monetization of platforms such as udemy and coursera, edx seemed to give me a sliver of hope that education

This seems like terrible news :( After the focus on monetization of platforms such as udemy and coursera, edx seemed to give me a sliver of hope that education will be open. Given the immense trust funds held by Harvard and MIT, I had hoped money would not be a factor and these institutions would be able to develop their platform in the open. I'd like to add .. non-profit does not mean free to end users. There are many good non-profits and there are many terrible ones (highly paid execs, insane amount of money spent on marketing).

benrbray 5y ago
I tried to use edX for the first time recently to take a "food science" course, but was disappointed to see that they've resorted to the same dark patterns as Coursera and others, such as: * Removing your access to course materials when the class is done, and disallowing access to past versions of the class. * Pressuring you into joining as many courses as possible, due to fear of missing out. When you visit the site, every course says "Course began ($TODAY-5)" to make you feel like "wow, I got here just in time! I better sign up for everything!". * Breaking courses into useless 2-minute chunks and constant unhelpful quizzes. I really just want to hear the lecturer speak for 20-30 minutes at a time uninterrupted, especially if I'm listening while doing dishes etc. * An unsettling UI that feels less like it's about presenting information in a compact and/or digestible way and more like it's tracking my every move and waiting for an opportunity to pounce. Everything is a button or clickthrough menu that requires interaction. Thankfully MIT OpenCourseWare still has plenty of lecture videos / course materials available. But I'm quite afraid for the future.
- maayank 5y ago
  > * Breaking courses into useless 2-minute chunks and constant unhelpful quizzes. I really just want to hear the lecturer speak for 20-30 minutes at a time uninterrupted, especially if I'm listening while doing dishes etc. That's actually one of my favorite things when taking online courses...
  - benrbray 5y ago
    That's cool, do what works for you! I just wish I had the option to disable the quizzes/breaks and see it all in one go. I personally like to watch talks / lectures while I'm doing dishes, but I can't click on the quizzes with my soapy hands. I'm frustrated that tools that are meant to be empowering actually prevent people from customizing the course content to suit their own learning style / constraints.
- ArtWomb 5y ago
  Not surprised a cooking class doesn't lend itself to an easy online port! But the lecture content from Harvard's Science and Cooking with El Bulli's Ferran Adria is still as you mention freely available online for all to enjoy. I recently had a free week pass to Masterclass. And though I found the content more entertaining than enlightening (How to be a Boss with Anna Wintour). There is something to be said about educational content that is given a Hollywood production budget. I think it was always inevitable institutes of higher education would seek auxiliary revenue streams from MOOCs. And an influx of capital could result in lecture videos that are Netflix quality, and that enjoy near 100% levels of retention ;) Science and Cooking: A Dialogue | Lecture 1 (2010) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9av8-lhJS8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9av8-lhJS8
  - benrbray 5y ago
    Those are actually exactly the lectures I watched before attempting to join the very disappointing EdX course by the same professors :). The lectures on YouTube were evening lectures meant to summarize each week of class, but the actual in-person students learned more about the actual chemistry involved, and did guided experiments to test different properties of food. I was hoping the EdX course by the same professors would give me an approximation that experience, but I was really disappointed. Technically there's a lot of good information still there, but the main problems were that the lectures were split into 2-minute chunks and the EdX UI constantly gets in the way of actually absorbing the content. I decided to buy a couple books on the topic instead.
  - drran 5y ago
    Watching of a movie about agent 007 will not make you a super spy. To learn something, you need to watch a lecture, then receive a task, perform the task and provide a result, then receive feedback, and, finally, learn from the feedback. Harvard video lectures are just another form of TV. They are mostly useless without Harvard.
- wodenokoto 5y ago
  > Breaking courses into useless 2-minute chunks and constant unhelpful quizzes. I really just want to hear the lecturer speak for 20-30 minutes at a time uninterrupted, especially if I'm listening while doing dishes etc. I disagree. If you’re doing dishes you are not taking a college level course. One of the best things about digital courses is that you don’t have to spend an hour zoning out to a professor talking and then spend a day doing exercises, but the two can be intertwined and knowledge can be cemented. Of course it can be done terribly. But the best online courses I’ve taken have split things up into small chunks with relevant exercises.
  - lmohseni 5y ago
    > If you’re doing dishes you are not taking a college level course. Sometimes I like to listen to a lecture 2 or 3 or even more times. Sometimes I like to listen to a lecture when I'm going for a run. Sometimes I like to listen while I'm doing chores. Seems presumptuous to say I'm "not taking the course" when we know that learning styles vary so much between individuals.
    - itsoktocry 5y ago
      >Sometimes I like to listen to a lecture 2 or 3 or even more times. YouTube has a ton of lectures, for free, that you can view and/or listen to in this manner. But doing dishes during a lecture seems antithetical to what they are trying to achieve with remote learning, and isn't the use case they should be catering to.
      - benrbray 5y ago
        It's not really catering to disable a feature. You can call it "audit" mode and offer no credential.
        ncallaway 5y ago
        Sure they could do that. You're essentially asking them to implement an additional feature to handle a new use case—a totally reasonable thing to ask. But it seems like it's really a stretch to say "it's a dark pattern to not implement this feature that covers my use case". If not implementing a desired feature is a "dark pattern", then I'm not really sure I know what constitutes a dark pattern
- odessacubbage 5y ago
  >useless 2-minute chunks this is what keeps turning me off of moocs tbh. so many seem like they're designed specifically for people with no attention span... and no one else.
- chaosbutters314 5y ago
  why is food science in quotes? you wouldnt put physics course in quotes. As someone that works as an engineer in the food industry, our work is just as rigorous as other fields. When working with vendors that support different domains, they always get excited to work with us since we have some of the craziest and most challenging problems that are not straight forward. While the work we do may not be critical to saving the world and solving some critical problem, it does make a difference in the grand scheme of things.
  - benrbray 5y ago
    I didn't mean it that way at all. They were intended more like title-quotes than belittling-quotes. Everything I have read / watched on the topic tells me that food science is a really deep and interesting topic that demands expertise in many different areas of chemistry, physics, and engineering all at once! It's why I was so interested to take a course in the first place!
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    Science and cooking is well known as a blowoff course @Harvard.
  - wrycoder 5y ago
    Food engineering, maybe. It's not science or even applied science.
- threatofrain 5y ago
  > MIT OpenCourseWare still has plenty of lecture videos / course materials available. Hmm, I'd disagree. For example, Analysis 1 is a very desired course for many technical majors. Go look at OpenCourseWare's offerings for Analysis 1, perhaps peruse some of the videos. Then go look for other desired courses -- missing content is characteristic and not the exception.
  - benrbray 5y ago
    I guess I see it from this perspective: I don't start my search for learning materials at OCW, but I often end up there through a Google search! Sometimes, it's for a surprisingly advanced / specific topic, too.
  - hackermailman 5y ago
    For analysis lectures this guy is hard to find in the Youtube algorithm but has the best analysis lectures you'll ever find https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL22w63XsKjqxqaF-Q7MSyeSG1W1_xaQoS https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL22w63XsKjqxqaF-Q7MSy... many go well with Terence Tao's book or whatever analysis text you're currently doing. As for OCW it is missing a lot of content that you can find if you look at the class page on stellar for prev semesters, for whatever reasons they're not allowed on there but you can still find full lectures (until they lockdown that access too)
- turadg 5y ago
  This is a dilution of the meaning of "dark pattern". darkpatterns.org which coined the term (and Wikipedia cites) says, "When you use websites and apps, you don’t read every word on every page - you skim read and make assumptions. If a company wants to trick you into doing something, they can take advantage of this by making a page look like it is saying one thing when it is in fact saying another." I don't see any of that in your observations. Moreover, what you attribute to some nefarious purpose is better explained by effective curriculum design. I haven't used edX lately but I worked at Coursera and I can tell you that the people who make that product have a passion to support learning in the world. * Removing access to course materials: it's a course, not a content library. When you can access it anytime, you're less likely to do the work of learning. You also won't be part of a learning cohort, which is a valuable learning activity. * Encouraging you to sign up for courses: this is a problem? Wouldn't someone who wants you to learn encourage you to sign up for courses? "Course began ($TODAY - 5)" that would be deceptive. Are you claiming that edX or Coursera does this? * Breaking courses into chunks and quizzes. How the heck is this deceptive? This design decision is backed by learning science. Listening while doing dishes does not get you the best learning outcomes; it's a university-level course not a podcast. * "Unsettling UI" "opportunity to pounce" I really don't know what to make of this one.
  - threatofrain 5y ago
    > Removing access to course materials: it's a course, not a content library. When you can access it anytime, you're less likely to do the work of learning. You also won't be part of a learning cohort, which is a valuable learning activity. Uh huh.
  - cstejerean 5y ago
    EdX definitely shows “Starts $TODAY” on courses with self paced start any time schedules. I know it does this and it still gets me every time by creating this false sense of urgency that I must enroll today lest I miss the opportunity.
    - musicale 5y ago
      It's the false time urgency trick, aka "today only!" Similar to the false inventory scarcity trick "only 1 left at this price!" Note to MIT and Harvard: when you start adopting the deceptive sales tricks of used-car salesmen and dubious infomercials, you're probably doing it wrong.
- geodel 5y ago
  You have made excellent points. So many of these courses feel that they are out to make one feel like shit if they decide to do free audit instead of paying. And this is despite telling multiple times the one is not interested in certificates which now can be attached on Linkedin.
- kilroywashere 5y ago
  something many don't know: you can torrent these courses.
- redgrange 5y ago
  Maybe their internal research shows significant benefits to the short chunks of lecture content.
- 4ec0755f5522 5y ago
  The pushback you're getting on this is.... I mean i struggle to find the words. If someone wants to not stare at a screen during a lecture this is 100% ok and I literally cannot fathom the idea that someone is "doing it wrong" if they do not. If someone does this and they don't absorb the material they..... watch the lecture again in a more focused manner. It really is ok!
- hackermailman 5y ago
  OCW started doing the same annoying 10m chunks with their scholar versions but so far have always still provided the full unedited lecture as an option.
- xtiansimon 5y ago
  > “Breaking courses into useless 2-minute chunks and constant unhelpful quizzes.“ In my previous experience this was determined by the instructor(s). Is this no longer the case? (Somehow determined by the platform?)
pizza234 5y ago
Coursera and Udemy are two radically different platforms. Udemy has a very standard pricing model. You pay what you use (=courses), so I don't see any way this can significantly change either way. The teachers are private and not institutions, so it would likely be unprofitable to adopt a "significantly-free" freemium model. Coursera, Edx and so on apply instead the freemium model, which could be under theoretical threat (eg. reduce availability of free material, introduce ads, etc.). However, I've been using them for a while, and I didn't really experience any impact due to this supposed monetization orientation - the courses are still free, and there's no pressure to pay for them. I actually pay each course. To be honest, I'm much more annoyed by the terrible, terrible UX of their products. There are also certainly some dark patterns, which I find dishonest, but at the end of the day, courses are free, and one can take them without interruption. A personal note: I actually find negative the association between well-known institutions and learning platforms. For example, Harward and EdX- the certificates are stamped as HarvadX, which is an intentional disassociation. This is fair, however, customers/students tend to associate prestige with the MOOC, which is misleading. There's a lot of people around who think that MOOC certificate have formal value.
- porknubbins 5y ago
  Yes I use Udemy a lot but I never even thought to compare it to online MOOC platforms. Udemy is great for short how to series on a particular technology, not for broad academic topics.
mumblemumble 5y ago
FUN (https://www.fun-mooc.fr https://www.fun-mooc.fr) is another good option that seems to be keeping it together. I haven't counted, but I think that most the courses are available in English.
- wrycoder 5y ago
  A quick survey - I see French being used.
  - mumblemumble 5y ago
    Hmm. Yes, you are right. For what it's worth, the ratio of English language seems to be higher for the programming MOOCs than it is for most the other subject areas.
    - wrycoder 5y ago
      I bookmarked the site, fwiw! Thanks.
- slim 5y ago
  Thank you for this link
sokoloff 5y ago
One of the problems of the current structure (at least as of five-ish years ago) is that most of the EdX employees are on the MIT payroll and benefits system (meaning the benefits are pretty great, but the pay bands are incompatible with competing [financially] for engineering talent against the actual tech market). If this breaks that logjam, it could be good for EdX in this one, small regard. Fundamentally though I agree with your summary; I trusted EdX a lot more because it was tightly affiliated with MIT and Harvard. Spun out into an arms-length institution, it seems like it will now be more likely to be driven into the ground by its leadership at some point in the next 100 years because of the lack of enough stabilizing "keel" provided by the affiliation with world-class universities.
pc86 5y ago
Having a highly paid executive (even multiple) doesn't make a non-profit "terrible." People deserve to be compensated for their work and you'll have a hard time arguing that running a large non-profit successfully isn't challenging, demanding, and deserving of good compensation.
- wpietri 5y ago
  It isn't necessarily so, but there's a correlation. A lot of terrible nonprofits are excellent at funneling money to execs. A lot of the work at nonprofits is challenging and demanding. Everybody deserves good compensation. But as with large for-profit companies, it's often only executives who get that. Take a look at CEO compensation over the decades. It has risen massively compared with worker pay: https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-compensation-2018/ https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-compensation-2018/ Maybe CEOs have gotten 940% better at CEOing in the last 40 years. But I think the more likely answer is executives have gotten much better at skimming a larger slice of pie. One could argue that if investors want to grossly overpay for-profit execs, that's between the investors and the execs. But that's definitely not true in not for profits, which get all sorts of legal and social leeway because they're in theory doing good for society. So yes, it's fair to argue that having very highly paid executives in a non-profit is terrible. Does that mean execs who are in it for the money will stick with fleecing investors? Probably. But I'd say that's better for the nonprofits, as then they're likely to end up with people who are there for the mission.
  - mattferderer 5y ago
    Unfortunately this is not just a non-profit issue. This is an everyone issue. One popular trending reason is that boards ask an outside firm what an average CEO makes at a similar size company. Then they decide to pay them slightly above average if they like them. Over 40 years this tends to sky rocket the salary of CEOs to where everyone wants an MBA just so they can get paid crazy amounts of work compared to what they put. Of course the salary of the CEO doesn't even tell the whole story when you bring in tax perks of shares vs W-2 wages. Plus the CEO will probably get many other company "perks".
montroser 5y ago
As someone who has spent many, many hours deep in the guts of the edX codebase, this news does not bother me. For what it does, the codebase is extremely sprawling, with layers upon layers of abandoned architectural directions. A lot of code for not a ton of functionality, and very basic functionality at that. Of course that all is secondary to the actual success it has found, and good for the the project for making it happen. But, if this move ends up being a catalyst for investing in alternatives, that will not make me sad.
dalbasal 5y ago
Time will tell. Honestly, what I think is missing is a good destination. What is edX trying to be?
wheaties 5y ago
The way they structure this is that it continues to be a non-profit where users have to pay a fee. The non-profit licenses content and things from 2U at rates that are mutually agreed upon by all principals. It just so happens that 2U will be negotiating with itself on what a sustainable fee should be...
willyg123 5y ago
> (highly paid execs...) EDX's IRS Form 990 for 2020 shows five executive making over $800k [1] [1] https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460807740/202141349349300224/full https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460...
- stonogo 5y ago
  Not bad for an hour a week, eh?
narraturgy 5y ago
>highly paid execs, insane amount of money spent on marketing I don't understand how not-for-profit orgs are supposed to succeed when they are constantly hampered by being expected to pay theirbwmployees low wages and not market themselves or spread the word because if they spend too much money doing these things then they are suddenly "bad" organizations. If not-for-profits are not allowed to compete in the market with for-profit organizations by offering competitive wages and utilizing competitive marketing budgets, then it's no wonder that charity is generally so ineffective. I suspect that the average armchair marketing executive might not be a good judge of what an "appropriate" marketing budget is.
CrazyCatDog 5y ago
As someone on the other side of the table (essentially chief revenue officer for a college)—there is a real dichotomy here: on the one hand, faculty were themselves trained face to face, it’s what we know best, the medium at which we are most proficient. That said, the presence of scaled alternatives makes the educational economics of yesteryear, no longer feasible. So our choices are: (1) Cut salaries and tenures or (2) Scale up Option (1) is a political third rail. Option (2) comes in many shades of grey: all in with someone like coursera, literally operating at 8x scale relative to traditional endowments, or lightweight (either roll your own or with select niche vendors), say 2x. By fiat, the closer the new medium to the old, the better the early results. Faculty CAN become entirely proficient and effective educators leveraging new technologies at 5c+ scale—but only if their’s a will. And, in order for the latter to exist, unfortunately it must be accompanied by a strictly positive remuneration, ie it cannot be free. This isn’t the utopia that MOOCs first promised, but rather the political realities higher Ed finds itself in. For these reasons, I myself have begun paying for professional tutelage when I encounter a pencil of mine in need of sharpening. Despite a career’s worth of mastering the practice of learning, my capabilities (and will?) were insufficient to glean more than the most elementary basics upon enrolling in MOOCs, however I came to learn that I benefited tremendously from personalized feedback in my learning, something AI is still some ways from delivering!

benrbray 5y ago

I tried to use edX for the first time recently to take a "food science" course, but was disappointed to see that they've resorted to the same dark patterns as Coursera and others, such as: * Removing your access to course materials when the class is done, and disallowing access to past versions of the class. * Pressuring you into joining as many courses as possible, due to fear of missing out. When you visit the site, every course says "Course began ($TODAY-5)" to make you feel like "wow, I got here just in time! I better sign up for everything!". * Breaking courses into useless 2-minute chunks and constant unhelpful quizzes. I really just want to hear the lecturer speak for 20-30 minutes at a time uninterrupted, especially if I'm listening while doing dishes etc. * An unsettling UI that feels less like it's about presenting information in a compact and/or digestible way and more like it's tracking my every move and waiting for an opportunity to pounce. Everything is a button or clickthrough menu that requires interaction. Thankfully MIT OpenCourseWare still has plenty of lecture videos / course materials available. But I'm quite afraid for the future.

maayank 5y ago
> * Breaking courses into useless 2-minute chunks and constant unhelpful quizzes. I really just want to hear the lecturer speak for 20-30 minutes at a time uninterrupted, especially if I'm listening while doing dishes etc. That's actually one of my favorite things when taking online courses...
- benrbray 5y ago
  That's cool, do what works for you! I just wish I had the option to disable the quizzes/breaks and see it all in one go. I personally like to watch talks / lectures while I'm doing dishes, but I can't click on the quizzes with my soapy hands. I'm frustrated that tools that are meant to be empowering actually prevent people from customizing the course content to suit their own learning style / constraints.
ArtWomb 5y ago
Not surprised a cooking class doesn't lend itself to an easy online port! But the lecture content from Harvard's Science and Cooking with El Bulli's Ferran Adria is still as you mention freely available online for all to enjoy. I recently had a free week pass to Masterclass. And though I found the content more entertaining than enlightening (How to be a Boss with Anna Wintour). There is something to be said about educational content that is given a Hollywood production budget. I think it was always inevitable institutes of higher education would seek auxiliary revenue streams from MOOCs. And an influx of capital could result in lecture videos that are Netflix quality, and that enjoy near 100% levels of retention ;) Science and Cooking: A Dialogue | Lecture 1 (2010) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9av8-lhJS8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9av8-lhJS8
- benrbray 5y ago
  Those are actually exactly the lectures I watched before attempting to join the very disappointing EdX course by the same professors :). The lectures on YouTube were evening lectures meant to summarize each week of class, but the actual in-person students learned more about the actual chemistry involved, and did guided experiments to test different properties of food. I was hoping the EdX course by the same professors would give me an approximation that experience, but I was really disappointed. Technically there's a lot of good information still there, but the main problems were that the lectures were split into 2-minute chunks and the EdX UI constantly gets in the way of actually absorbing the content. I decided to buy a couple books on the topic instead.
- drran 5y ago
  Watching of a movie about agent 007 will not make you a super spy. To learn something, you need to watch a lecture, then receive a task, perform the task and provide a result, then receive feedback, and, finally, learn from the feedback. Harvard video lectures are just another form of TV. They are mostly useless without Harvard.
wodenokoto 5y ago
> Breaking courses into useless 2-minute chunks and constant unhelpful quizzes. I really just want to hear the lecturer speak for 20-30 minutes at a time uninterrupted, especially if I'm listening while doing dishes etc. I disagree. If you’re doing dishes you are not taking a college level course. One of the best things about digital courses is that you don’t have to spend an hour zoning out to a professor talking and then spend a day doing exercises, but the two can be intertwined and knowledge can be cemented. Of course it can be done terribly. But the best online courses I’ve taken have split things up into small chunks with relevant exercises.
- lmohseni 5y ago
  > If you’re doing dishes you are not taking a college level course. Sometimes I like to listen to a lecture 2 or 3 or even more times. Sometimes I like to listen to a lecture when I'm going for a run. Sometimes I like to listen while I'm doing chores. Seems presumptuous to say I'm "not taking the course" when we know that learning styles vary so much between individuals.
  - itsoktocry 5y ago
    >Sometimes I like to listen to a lecture 2 or 3 or even more times. YouTube has a ton of lectures, for free, that you can view and/or listen to in this manner. But doing dishes during a lecture seems antithetical to what they are trying to achieve with remote learning, and isn't the use case they should be catering to.
    - benrbray 5y ago
      It's not really catering to disable a feature. You can call it "audit" mode and offer no credential.
      - ncallaway 5y ago
        Sure they could do that. You're essentially asking them to implement an additional feature to handle a new use case—a totally reasonable thing to ask. But it seems like it's really a stretch to say "it's a dark pattern to not implement this feature that covers my use case". If not implementing a desired feature is a "dark pattern", then I'm not really sure I know what constitutes a dark pattern
odessacubbage 5y ago
>useless 2-minute chunks this is what keeps turning me off of moocs tbh. so many seem like they're designed specifically for people with no attention span... and no one else.
chaosbutters314 5y ago
why is food science in quotes? you wouldnt put physics course in quotes. As someone that works as an engineer in the food industry, our work is just as rigorous as other fields. When working with vendors that support different domains, they always get excited to work with us since we have some of the craziest and most challenging problems that are not straight forward. While the work we do may not be critical to saving the world and solving some critical problem, it does make a difference in the grand scheme of things.
- benrbray 5y ago
  I didn't mean it that way at all. They were intended more like title-quotes than belittling-quotes. Everything I have read / watched on the topic tells me that food science is a really deep and interesting topic that demands expertise in many different areas of chemistry, physics, and engineering all at once! It's why I was so interested to take a course in the first place!
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  Science and cooking is well known as a blowoff course @Harvard.
- wrycoder 5y ago
  Food engineering, maybe. It's not science or even applied science.
threatofrain 5y ago
> MIT OpenCourseWare still has plenty of lecture videos / course materials available. Hmm, I'd disagree. For example, Analysis 1 is a very desired course for many technical majors. Go look at OpenCourseWare's offerings for Analysis 1, perhaps peruse some of the videos. Then go look for other desired courses -- missing content is characteristic and not the exception.
- benrbray 5y ago
  I guess I see it from this perspective: I don't start my search for learning materials at OCW, but I often end up there through a Google search! Sometimes, it's for a surprisingly advanced / specific topic, too.
- hackermailman 5y ago
  For analysis lectures this guy is hard to find in the Youtube algorithm but has the best analysis lectures you'll ever find https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL22w63XsKjqxqaF-Q7MSyeSG1W1_xaQoS https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL22w63XsKjqxqaF-Q7MSy... many go well with Terence Tao's book or whatever analysis text you're currently doing. As for OCW it is missing a lot of content that you can find if you look at the class page on stellar for prev semesters, for whatever reasons they're not allowed on there but you can still find full lectures (until they lockdown that access too)
turadg 5y ago
This is a dilution of the meaning of "dark pattern". darkpatterns.org which coined the term (and Wikipedia cites) says, "When you use websites and apps, you don’t read every word on every page - you skim read and make assumptions. If a company wants to trick you into doing something, they can take advantage of this by making a page look like it is saying one thing when it is in fact saying another." I don't see any of that in your observations. Moreover, what you attribute to some nefarious purpose is better explained by effective curriculum design. I haven't used edX lately but I worked at Coursera and I can tell you that the people who make that product have a passion to support learning in the world. * Removing access to course materials: it's a course, not a content library. When you can access it anytime, you're less likely to do the work of learning. You also won't be part of a learning cohort, which is a valuable learning activity. * Encouraging you to sign up for courses: this is a problem? Wouldn't someone who wants you to learn encourage you to sign up for courses? "Course began ($TODAY - 5)" that would be deceptive. Are you claiming that edX or Coursera does this? * Breaking courses into chunks and quizzes. How the heck is this deceptive? This design decision is backed by learning science. Listening while doing dishes does not get you the best learning outcomes; it's a university-level course not a podcast. * "Unsettling UI" "opportunity to pounce" I really don't know what to make of this one.
- threatofrain 5y ago
  > Removing access to course materials: it's a course, not a content library. When you can access it anytime, you're less likely to do the work of learning. You also won't be part of a learning cohort, which is a valuable learning activity. Uh huh.
- cstejerean 5y ago
  EdX definitely shows “Starts $TODAY” on courses with self paced start any time schedules. I know it does this and it still gets me every time by creating this false sense of urgency that I must enroll today lest I miss the opportunity.
  - musicale 5y ago
    It's the false time urgency trick, aka "today only!" Similar to the false inventory scarcity trick "only 1 left at this price!" Note to MIT and Harvard: when you start adopting the deceptive sales tricks of used-car salesmen and dubious infomercials, you're probably doing it wrong.
geodel 5y ago
You have made excellent points. So many of these courses feel that they are out to make one feel like shit if they decide to do free audit instead of paying. And this is despite telling multiple times the one is not interested in certificates which now can be attached on Linkedin.
kilroywashere 5y ago
something many don't know: you can torrent these courses.
redgrange 5y ago
Maybe their internal research shows significant benefits to the short chunks of lecture content.
4ec0755f5522 5y ago
The pushback you're getting on this is.... I mean i struggle to find the words. If someone wants to not stare at a screen during a lecture this is 100% ok and I literally cannot fathom the idea that someone is "doing it wrong" if they do not. If someone does this and they don't absorb the material they..... watch the lecture again in a more focused manner. It really is ok!
hackermailman 5y ago
OCW started doing the same annoying 10m chunks with their scholar versions but so far have always still provided the full unedited lecture as an option.
xtiansimon 5y ago
> “Breaking courses into useless 2-minute chunks and constant unhelpful quizzes.“ In my previous experience this was determined by the instructor(s). Is this no longer the case? (Somehow determined by the platform?)

pizza234 5y ago

Coursera and Udemy are two radically different platforms. Udemy has a very standard pricing model. You pay what you use (=courses), so I don't see any way this can significantly change either way. The teachers are private and not institutions, so it would likely be unprofitable to adopt a "significantly-free" freemium model. Coursera, Edx and so on apply instead the freemium model, which could be under theoretical threat (eg. reduce availability of free material, introduce ads, etc.). However, I've been using them for a while, and I didn't really experience any impact due to this supposed monetization orientation - the courses are still free, and there's no pressure to pay for them. I actually pay each course. To be honest, I'm much more annoyed by the terrible, terrible UX of their products. There are also certainly some dark patterns, which I find dishonest, but at the end of the day, courses are free, and one can take them without interruption. A personal note: I actually find negative the association between well-known institutions and learning platforms. For example, Harward and EdX- the certificates are stamped as HarvadX, which is an intentional disassociation. This is fair, however, customers/students tend to associate prestige with the MOOC, which is misleading. There's a lot of people around who think that MOOC certificate have formal value.

porknubbins 5y ago
Yes I use Udemy a lot but I never even thought to compare it to online MOOC platforms. Udemy is great for short how to series on a particular technology, not for broad academic topics.

mumblemumble 5y ago

FUN (https://www.fun-mooc.fr https://www.fun-mooc.fr) is another good option that seems to be keeping it together. I haven't counted, but I think that most the courses are available in English.

wrycoder 5y ago
A quick survey - I see French being used.
- mumblemumble 5y ago
  Hmm. Yes, you are right. For what it's worth, the ratio of English language seems to be higher for the programming MOOCs than it is for most the other subject areas.
  - wrycoder 5y ago
    I bookmarked the site, fwiw! Thanks.
slim 5y ago
Thank you for this link

sokoloff 5y ago

One of the problems of the current structure (at least as of five-ish years ago) is that most of the EdX employees are on the MIT payroll and benefits system (meaning the benefits are pretty great, but the pay bands are incompatible with competing [financially] for engineering talent against the actual tech market). If this breaks that logjam, it could be good for EdX in this one, small regard. Fundamentally though I agree with your summary; I trusted EdX a lot more because it was tightly affiliated with MIT and Harvard. Spun out into an arms-length institution, it seems like it will now be more likely to be driven into the ground by its leadership at some point in the next 100 years because of the lack of enough stabilizing "keel" provided by the affiliation with world-class universities.

pc86 5y ago

Having a highly paid executive (even multiple) doesn't make a non-profit "terrible." People deserve to be compensated for their work and you'll have a hard time arguing that running a large non-profit successfully isn't challenging, demanding, and deserving of good compensation.

wpietri 5y ago
It isn't necessarily so, but there's a correlation. A lot of terrible nonprofits are excellent at funneling money to execs. A lot of the work at nonprofits is challenging and demanding. Everybody deserves good compensation. But as with large for-profit companies, it's often only executives who get that. Take a look at CEO compensation over the decades. It has risen massively compared with worker pay: https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-compensation-2018/ https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-compensation-2018/ Maybe CEOs have gotten 940% better at CEOing in the last 40 years. But I think the more likely answer is executives have gotten much better at skimming a larger slice of pie. One could argue that if investors want to grossly overpay for-profit execs, that's between the investors and the execs. But that's definitely not true in not for profits, which get all sorts of legal and social leeway because they're in theory doing good for society. So yes, it's fair to argue that having very highly paid executives in a non-profit is terrible. Does that mean execs who are in it for the money will stick with fleecing investors? Probably. But I'd say that's better for the nonprofits, as then they're likely to end up with people who are there for the mission.
- mattferderer 5y ago
  Unfortunately this is not just a non-profit issue. This is an everyone issue. One popular trending reason is that boards ask an outside firm what an average CEO makes at a similar size company. Then they decide to pay them slightly above average if they like them. Over 40 years this tends to sky rocket the salary of CEOs to where everyone wants an MBA just so they can get paid crazy amounts of work compared to what they put. Of course the salary of the CEO doesn't even tell the whole story when you bring in tax perks of shares vs W-2 wages. Plus the CEO will probably get many other company "perks".

montroser 5y ago

As someone who has spent many, many hours deep in the guts of the edX codebase, this news does not bother me. For what it does, the codebase is extremely sprawling, with layers upon layers of abandoned architectural directions. A lot of code for not a ton of functionality, and very basic functionality at that. Of course that all is secondary to the actual success it has found, and good for the the project for making it happen. But, if this move ends up being a catalyst for investing in alternatives, that will not make me sad.

dalbasal 5y ago

Time will tell. Honestly, what I think is missing is a good destination. What is edX trying to be?

wheaties 5y ago

The way they structure this is that it continues to be a non-profit where users have to pay a fee. The non-profit licenses content and things from 2U at rates that are mutually agreed upon by all principals. It just so happens that 2U will be negotiating with itself on what a sustainable fee should be...

willyg123 5y ago

> (highly paid execs...) EDX's IRS Form 990 for 2020 shows five executive making over $800k [1] [1] https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460807740/202141349349300224/full https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460...

stonogo 5y ago
Not bad for an hour a week, eh?

narraturgy 5y ago

>highly paid execs, insane amount of money spent on marketing I don't understand how not-for-profit orgs are supposed to succeed when they are constantly hampered by being expected to pay theirbwmployees low wages and not market themselves or spread the word because if they spend too much money doing these things then they are suddenly "bad" organizations. If not-for-profits are not allowed to compete in the market with for-profit organizations by offering competitive wages and utilizing competitive marketing budgets, then it's no wonder that charity is generally so ineffective. I suspect that the average armchair marketing executive might not be a good judge of what an "appropriate" marketing budget is.

CrazyCatDog 5y ago

As someone on the other side of the table (essentially chief revenue officer for a college)—there is a real dichotomy here: on the one hand, faculty were themselves trained face to face, it’s what we know best, the medium at which we are most proficient. That said, the presence of scaled alternatives makes the educational economics of yesteryear, no longer feasible. So our choices are: (1) Cut salaries and tenures or (2) Scale up Option (1) is a political third rail. Option (2) comes in many shades of grey: all in with someone like coursera, literally operating at 8x scale relative to traditional endowments, or lightweight (either roll your own or with select niche vendors), say 2x. By fiat, the closer the new medium to the old, the better the early results. Faculty CAN become entirely proficient and effective educators leveraging new technologies at 5c+ scale—but only if their’s a will. And, in order for the latter to exist, unfortunately it must be accompanied by a strictly positive remuneration, ie it cannot be free. This isn’t the utopia that MOOCs first promised, but rather the political realities higher Ed finds itself in. For these reasons, I myself have begun paying for professional tutelage when I encounter a pencil of mine in need of sharpening. Despite a career’s worth of mastering the practice of learning, my capabilities (and will?) were insufficient to glean more than the most elementary basics upon enrolling in MOOCs, however I came to learn that I benefited tremendously from personalized feedback in my learning, something AI is still some ways from delivering!