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I don't understand what's the need to constraint these courses in X weeks duration when one of the advantages of this presentation is to allow self paced study.

I don't understand what's the need to constraint these courses in X weeks duration when one of the advantages of this presentation is to allow self paced study. I started the PGM course and found it interesting but cannot spend +10 hours per week on it just to get an email certificate in the end. I can do Kahn academy classes anytime I want right? why in coursera do I have to pretend I'm taking a college class?

ig1 14y ago
Because some people work better with deadlines, without deadlines they might keep putting of working on it.
SatvikBeri 14y ago
Psychology. The vast majority of people show significantly better results with specific deadlines. Here's one study showing the difference: http://www.iew.uzh.ch/study/courses/downloads/ariely_wertenbroch.pdf http://www.iew.uzh.ch/study/courses/downloads/ariely_wertenb...
- ilcavero 14y ago
  what you say is true, but also that getting a good grade is a strong motivator and that is not available unless you follow the deadline regime. Perhaps what is needed are more slow paced courses that you could fast track and finish faster if you wish to do so.
- 0ren 14y ago
  There could be other time-based methods to encourage students, rather than hard deadlines. For instance, suppose the class had a bag with unlimited (or large) number of question, and required each student to score 100 points to pass. Students would have unlimited number of attempts at quizzes/assignments, but their score decays with time (think HN submission ranking decay). That is, if you worked hard and scored 70, but then you were busy/away for a month, your score drops to, say, 50. So you are encouraged to finish the questions in a timely manner, but on the other hand, you can also make up for that missed month by putting more work when you are back. With this method or a something similar, you do not "lose everything" when you miss a deadline. IMHO, "losing everything" for missing a deadline is part of the reason for the (exponential?) decay in the number of students participating in Coursera's PGM class[1,2]. [1] Based on PGM's "quiz's highest score" statistics, the total numbers of participating students are 6950, 3500, 2650 for week1, week2 and week3 respectively (other weeks' stats are not complete as of this writing). [2] Another interesting stats is the ratio of perfect scores to all other scores: 25.2%, 34.3%, 49%. This could suggest that the deadline system filters out most students but the very top ones (assuming uniform difficulty of quizzes, and uniform quality of lecture videos/slides, etc.). This may not be what you want from an educational perspective. And, yet it may actually be what you want to support a business plan similar to Udacity- discovering talent. (see my comment below)
  - SatvikBeri 14y ago
    Interesting stats. I would love to see some stats on classes using different deadline models. For example, the Machine Learning course gave you 80% of the grade if you were late, and the NLP course gives 50%, as opposed to losing everything. I wonder how that affects the drop-out rate.
    - robrenaud 14y ago
      This isn't about coursera, but there was some interesting research in presented in Predictably Irrational about deadlines and student performance. Basically, deadlines help a lot, and having many small deadlines to ensure continuous work helps prevent procrastination. http://bookoutlines.pbworks.com/w/page/14422685/Predictably%20Irrational http://bookoutlines.pbworks.com/w/page/14422685/Predictably%... > Group 3 (imposed deadlines) got the best grades. Group 2 (no deadlines) got the worst grades, and Group 1 (self-selected deadlines) finished in the middle.
      - SatvikBeri 14y ago
        This is wonderfully circular-the study I posted in my original post was by Dan Ariely :)
        robrenaud 14y ago
        Argh, sorry. One of the grand parent posts was too long, I didn't read the parents above it.
cardine 14y ago
If you don't care about what grade you get you can probably still work at your own pace and just not get a good grade if you don't finish on time. And if you do care about what grade you get you are already pretending you're taking a college class.
- ilcavero 14y ago
  That's what I plan to do and I'm assuming that the materials will remain available once the course is over like they were for the ML course, but there could be a better way to deal with left-behind students (which I believe are a big %) than making them circumvent a good chunk of the class experience (grades, email certificate), in particular I'm demotivated to do projects because instead of feeling rewarded for the work I did, I feel penalized for being late on some imposed schedule.
stordoff 14y ago
What I have liked about the strict deadlines is that a community can form around the course. If you have a large group of people taking a course at roughly the same pace, the forums etc. (IMO) are a much more useful resource. Udacity have an interesting solution to this. The first run of CS101 and CS373 had strict, weekly deadlines. They are now being re-offered on a self-paced basis.
- amirmc 14y ago
  Absolutely agree and it's (normally) one of the main differences between on-site vs online learning. That there's a ready community of people going through the same thing as you at the same time (usually experiencing the same problems). That, combined with the deadlines, can be very motivating. (essentially, 'you are not alone').

ig1 14y ago

Because some people work better with deadlines, without deadlines they might keep putting of working on it.

SatvikBeri 14y ago

Psychology. The vast majority of people show significantly better results with specific deadlines. Here's one study showing the difference: http://www.iew.uzh.ch/study/courses/downloads/ariely_wertenbroch.pdf http://www.iew.uzh.ch/study/courses/downloads/ariely_wertenb...

ilcavero 14y ago
what you say is true, but also that getting a good grade is a strong motivator and that is not available unless you follow the deadline regime. Perhaps what is needed are more slow paced courses that you could fast track and finish faster if you wish to do so.
0ren 14y ago
There could be other time-based methods to encourage students, rather than hard deadlines. For instance, suppose the class had a bag with unlimited (or large) number of question, and required each student to score 100 points to pass. Students would have unlimited number of attempts at quizzes/assignments, but their score decays with time (think HN submission ranking decay). That is, if you worked hard and scored 70, but then you were busy/away for a month, your score drops to, say, 50. So you are encouraged to finish the questions in a timely manner, but on the other hand, you can also make up for that missed month by putting more work when you are back. With this method or a something similar, you do not "lose everything" when you miss a deadline. IMHO, "losing everything" for missing a deadline is part of the reason for the (exponential?) decay in the number of students participating in Coursera's PGM class[1,2]. [1] Based on PGM's "quiz's highest score" statistics, the total numbers of participating students are 6950, 3500, 2650 for week1, week2 and week3 respectively (other weeks' stats are not complete as of this writing). [2] Another interesting stats is the ratio of perfect scores to all other scores: 25.2%, 34.3%, 49%. This could suggest that the deadline system filters out most students but the very top ones (assuming uniform difficulty of quizzes, and uniform quality of lecture videos/slides, etc.). This may not be what you want from an educational perspective. And, yet it may actually be what you want to support a business plan similar to Udacity- discovering talent. (see my comment below)
- SatvikBeri 14y ago
  Interesting stats. I would love to see some stats on classes using different deadline models. For example, the Machine Learning course gave you 80% of the grade if you were late, and the NLP course gives 50%, as opposed to losing everything. I wonder how that affects the drop-out rate.
  - robrenaud 14y ago
    This isn't about coursera, but there was some interesting research in presented in Predictably Irrational about deadlines and student performance. Basically, deadlines help a lot, and having many small deadlines to ensure continuous work helps prevent procrastination. http://bookoutlines.pbworks.com/w/page/14422685/Predictably%20Irrational http://bookoutlines.pbworks.com/w/page/14422685/Predictably%... > Group 3 (imposed deadlines) got the best grades. Group 2 (no deadlines) got the worst grades, and Group 1 (self-selected deadlines) finished in the middle.
    - SatvikBeri 14y ago
      This is wonderfully circular-the study I posted in my original post was by Dan Ariely :)
      - robrenaud 14y ago
        Argh, sorry. One of the grand parent posts was too long, I didn't read the parents above it.

cardine 14y ago

If you don't care about what grade you get you can probably still work at your own pace and just not get a good grade if you don't finish on time. And if you do care about what grade you get you are already pretending you're taking a college class.

ilcavero 14y ago
That's what I plan to do and I'm assuming that the materials will remain available once the course is over like they were for the ML course, but there could be a better way to deal with left-behind students (which I believe are a big %) than making them circumvent a good chunk of the class experience (grades, email certificate), in particular I'm demotivated to do projects because instead of feeling rewarded for the work I did, I feel penalized for being late on some imposed schedule.

stordoff 14y ago

What I have liked about the strict deadlines is that a community can form around the course. If you have a large group of people taking a course at roughly the same pace, the forums etc. (IMO) are a much more useful resource. Udacity have an interesting solution to this. The first run of CS101 and CS373 had strict, weekly deadlines. They are now being re-offered on a self-paced basis.

amirmc 14y ago
Absolutely agree and it's (normally) one of the main differences between on-site vs online learning. That there's a ready community of people going through the same thing as you at the same time (usually experiencing the same problems). That, combined with the deadlines, can be very motivating. (essentially, 'you are not alone').