6 ms·

I worked in this field - I've met Anant, John Katzman, and Bonnie Ferri. The MOOCs (and any well-run university, probably the minority) have excellent data on w

by hilux 2y ago

I worked in this field - I've met Anant, John Katzman, and Bonnie Ferri. The MOOCs (and any well-run university, probably the minority) have excellent data on what classes students want to take. Well over 90% of the searches on their site are for tech-related topics. And most of the remainder are probably for business. You can fantasize about a USA where people want to read Plato and accidentally get English degrees. I also think that would be great. In our current reality, only the trust-fund kids, who already know they never need to work, will want to pay for that. (I mean, their dad or grandpa is the one paying.)

rebolek 2y ago
I get your point. Paid school is problem and people should be free to find their purpose.
- dehrmann 2y ago
  Unpaid school is a different problem because it's society subsidizing their hobbies.
  - Hellolearning 2y ago
    A persuite of knowledge is not 'subsidizing their hobbies'. Its a captialsm valuation nothing more. What are we as humans if we don't have the resources to educate and learn and be curious? I really hope the current AI and Robot wave will lead us all to a more 'free' society
    - drawnwren 2y ago
      It’s strange to me that you can’t see the correlation between free markets and their products while simultaneously looking forward to more production from those same markets.
      - Hellolearning 2y ago
        Get rid of all unnecessary things and overhead in our society and we do not have a resource issue. Focus on automatisation and we don't have a production issue. Its a man made problem, not some kind of magic rule.
        drawnwren 2y ago
        I think this is one of those wordcel arguments that sounds nice but probably has no bearing on actual reality. If we live in a world where human effort has no marginal utility, we also live in a world where human life has no value. If we don't, you're in a world where you're competing with other humans for some set of resources. Regardless of whether you believe that you are competing with them, others are competing with you. I think competition is perhaps one of the most basic rules of reality.
        Hellolearning 2y ago
        [dead]
    - mytailorisrich 2y ago
      We are free to be curious and to "find ourselves". But why should we expect society to pay for it beyond a certain point? At some point it is indeed "subsidizing hobbies". As long as things cost something, and a course costs something to create and deliver, the question of valuation in some way is valid. It's not a capitalist issue, it's an allocation of resources issue, which is something universal as long as resources are limited. Where it works, the free market is great because it transparently shows how people actually value something. That is, it shows how we actually are and what we actually want, not what would be nice in some utopian world.
      - knallfrosch 2y ago
        It's interesting how abstract these discussions are. Countries with free – free for the student, at least – tertiary education do exist and you can use them for comparison.
        mytailorisrich 2y ago
        Yes they do exist. On the one hand this is great but on the other hand it also also generates waste, both in terms of resources and time. I went to university in France when it was both free (still basically is) with no selection for entry and the amount of waste was huge for no benefit to anyone... well except for official stats because "I'm not unemployed, I'm a student"...
        em-bee 2y ago
        please elaborate on the waste you saw. i studied in germany and austria and i didn't notice waste. on the contrary, requiring payment would have excluded many of the good students. (entry is limited to qualified students however, so there is some selection. does that make all the difference? i doubt it.)
        mytailorisrich 2y ago
        > on the contrary, requiring payment would have excluded many of the good students How? Surely people/families in Germany/Austria, some of the richest countries in the world, can afford to pay something towards education costs... And in fact they do through their taxes, which are needed to pay for this "free" university. [obviously poor families can benefit from bursaries so this is not a relevant argument] The waste is students picking courses just to do something or just because they are vaguely interested in them (and then they get all the benefits afforded to students, including housing subsidies). And then they give up, or they fail, or once they graduate they realise that it gets them exactly 0 job. So huge waste of resources and time and, as mentioned, sometimes a way to hide youth unemployment.
    - oldpersonintx 2y ago
      [dead]
authorfly 2y ago
I think you are very correct. The other point, as made in the "EdTech doesn't scale" post the other day, is that Edutainment is one of the only really scalable ways to do EdTech profitably, and that favours consumption, not growth or testing (because for learning to be effective, it more or less has to be quite hard). At least, to remember most of the content, not just highlights.
- anal_reactor 2y ago
  Something I noticed is that I watch a lot of edutainment content but I don't really retain any information from that, not even the highlights. I'm wondering whether this is basically wasted time.
  - pas 2y ago
    Wasting time is okay. Some people watch sports, play video games, go to the pub, work on that old thing in the garage (and just end up watching youtube videos about other people's projects). I started taking notes, started cutting down on low-quality infotainment/edutainment (for example while I know folks at SciShow work a lot on their content, put a lot of effort into producing scientifically correct stuff, but it's just not deep enough, it's too fast), and in general try to watch/listen to multiple videos that touch the same topics. (Because many complex things require multiple passes to comprehend anyway, and getting different viewpoints, different presentation helps a lot with that.)
    - passion__desire 2y ago
      The multiple passes statement reminded me of The Unfinished Swan game. https://youtu.be/X9YaFY8S75M https://youtu.be/X9YaFY8S75M
  - hilux 2y ago
    If the student only watches the content, and doesn't have the chance to be (1) tested on it, and (2) apply it over time, the learning is quickly lost. That's my personal experience, and that's also the theory nowadays. I mean, it's not worse than watching reality TV or sports or something. Maybe better - maybe consuming edutainment will inspire you to follow through and apply it.
StefanBatory 2y ago
Also, as someone who used MOOC quite often, I take only STEM courses because I'm used to any humanities subjects being of lesser quality. I'd rather read a good book about that topic than take course online. For STEM things, I think it's usually of the same quality, and I prefer videos, so it's easier choice.
bnralt 2y ago
A large part of the issue, as I see it, is that the university format is just a very poor way for people to learn information. If people want to learn a tech skill and don't care about credentials, they invariably find a lot of other ways far superior to university courses. The closest I've seen to university style courses that people actually find useful is Udemy. Very few people seem to get much use from EdX or Coursera classes, far fewer still think it's a good idea to take classes at their local university. Same with Plato. You can read Plato on your own, you can listen to many more hours of free lectures on Plato, usually from better quality speakers, than you'd ever get at a university, you can join groups of people who want to discuss Plato's philosophy. These people will actually be individuals interested in the topic, not bored university classmates who spend half the time talking about other things because of their disinterest. This is all for free. Even discounting the cost, university education trails far behind other forms of learning. Once the cost is factored in, the only appeal ends up being the credentials and the four year summer camp environment. That's why when I see MOOCs brought up these days in the wild, it's usually from people who are taking them for credentials. Once credentials are taken away, MOOCs and universities just don't have a ton to offer for a motivated learner. It would be good if credentials and education were decoupled (for instance, like with the CFA), but there doesn't appear to be much of a push for that.
- em-bee 2y ago
  decoupling would really make a difference. i should be able to acquire knowledge however i want or am able to, and then pass a standardized process to get the accreditation. the problem with standardized tests however is that they lead to more schools just teaching for the test and not actually helping the students learn. it's tricky. depending on the subject or field. though i suppose papers and dissertations can be judged on their own merits. but other tests are trickier to do in a way that they can't just be passed by memorizing test knowledge.
  - bnralt 2y ago
    Honestly, though, removing standardized testing usually just obfuscates the problem. There are many ways to game the system. The ubiquitous college cramming is usually about temporarily learning for the test the night before a big exam. It's better to work on improving transparent standards for credentials than to have tens of thousands of different standards that no one pays attention to and hoping that they're adequate, despite having no clue if that's actually the case.

by hilux 2y ago

rebolek 2y ago

I get your point. Paid school is problem and people should be free to find their purpose.

dehrmann 2y ago
Unpaid school is a different problem because it's society subsidizing their hobbies.
- Hellolearning 2y ago
  A persuite of knowledge is not 'subsidizing their hobbies'. Its a captialsm valuation nothing more. What are we as humans if we don't have the resources to educate and learn and be curious? I really hope the current AI and Robot wave will lead us all to a more 'free' society
  - drawnwren 2y ago
    It’s strange to me that you can’t see the correlation between free markets and their products while simultaneously looking forward to more production from those same markets.
    - Hellolearning 2y ago
      Get rid of all unnecessary things and overhead in our society and we do not have a resource issue. Focus on automatisation and we don't have a production issue. Its a man made problem, not some kind of magic rule.
      - drawnwren 2y ago
        I think this is one of those wordcel arguments that sounds nice but probably has no bearing on actual reality. If we live in a world where human effort has no marginal utility, we also live in a world where human life has no value. If we don't, you're in a world where you're competing with other humans for some set of resources. Regardless of whether you believe that you are competing with them, others are competing with you. I think competition is perhaps one of the most basic rules of reality.
        Hellolearning 2y ago
        [dead]
  - mytailorisrich 2y ago
    We are free to be curious and to "find ourselves". But why should we expect society to pay for it beyond a certain point? At some point it is indeed "subsidizing hobbies". As long as things cost something, and a course costs something to create and deliver, the question of valuation in some way is valid. It's not a capitalist issue, it's an allocation of resources issue, which is something universal as long as resources are limited. Where it works, the free market is great because it transparently shows how people actually value something. That is, it shows how we actually are and what we actually want, not what would be nice in some utopian world.
    - knallfrosch 2y ago
      It's interesting how abstract these discussions are. Countries with free – free for the student, at least – tertiary education do exist and you can use them for comparison.
      - mytailorisrich 2y ago
        Yes they do exist. On the one hand this is great but on the other hand it also also generates waste, both in terms of resources and time. I went to university in France when it was both free (still basically is) with no selection for entry and the amount of waste was huge for no benefit to anyone... well except for official stats because "I'm not unemployed, I'm a student"...
        em-bee 2y ago
        please elaborate on the waste you saw. i studied in germany and austria and i didn't notice waste. on the contrary, requiring payment would have excluded many of the good students. (entry is limited to qualified students however, so there is some selection. does that make all the difference? i doubt it.)
        mytailorisrich 2y ago
        > on the contrary, requiring payment would have excluded many of the good students How? Surely people/families in Germany/Austria, some of the richest countries in the world, can afford to pay something towards education costs... And in fact they do through their taxes, which are needed to pay for this "free" university. [obviously poor families can benefit from bursaries so this is not a relevant argument] The waste is students picking courses just to do something or just because they are vaguely interested in them (and then they get all the benefits afforded to students, including housing subsidies). And then they give up, or they fail, or once they graduate they realise that it gets them exactly 0 job. So huge waste of resources and time and, as mentioned, sometimes a way to hide youth unemployment.
  - oldpersonintx 2y ago
    [dead]

authorfly 2y ago

I think you are very correct. The other point, as made in the "EdTech doesn't scale" post the other day, is that Edutainment is one of the only really scalable ways to do EdTech profitably, and that favours consumption, not growth or testing (because for learning to be effective, it more or less has to be quite hard). At least, to remember most of the content, not just highlights.

anal_reactor 2y ago
Something I noticed is that I watch a lot of edutainment content but I don't really retain any information from that, not even the highlights. I'm wondering whether this is basically wasted time.
- pas 2y ago
  Wasting time is okay. Some people watch sports, play video games, go to the pub, work on that old thing in the garage (and just end up watching youtube videos about other people's projects). I started taking notes, started cutting down on low-quality infotainment/edutainment (for example while I know folks at SciShow work a lot on their content, put a lot of effort into producing scientifically correct stuff, but it's just not deep enough, it's too fast), and in general try to watch/listen to multiple videos that touch the same topics. (Because many complex things require multiple passes to comprehend anyway, and getting different viewpoints, different presentation helps a lot with that.)
  - passion__desire 2y ago
    The multiple passes statement reminded me of The Unfinished Swan game. https://youtu.be/X9YaFY8S75M https://youtu.be/X9YaFY8S75M
- hilux 2y ago
  If the student only watches the content, and doesn't have the chance to be (1) tested on it, and (2) apply it over time, the learning is quickly lost. That's my personal experience, and that's also the theory nowadays. I mean, it's not worse than watching reality TV or sports or something. Maybe better - maybe consuming edutainment will inspire you to follow through and apply it.

StefanBatory 2y ago

Also, as someone who used MOOC quite often, I take only STEM courses because I'm used to any humanities subjects being of lesser quality. I'd rather read a good book about that topic than take course online. For STEM things, I think it's usually of the same quality, and I prefer videos, so it's easier choice.

bnralt 2y ago

A large part of the issue, as I see it, is that the university format is just a very poor way for people to learn information. If people want to learn a tech skill and don't care about credentials, they invariably find a lot of other ways far superior to university courses. The closest I've seen to university style courses that people actually find useful is Udemy. Very few people seem to get much use from EdX or Coursera classes, far fewer still think it's a good idea to take classes at their local university. Same with Plato. You can read Plato on your own, you can listen to many more hours of free lectures on Plato, usually from better quality speakers, than you'd ever get at a university, you can join groups of people who want to discuss Plato's philosophy. These people will actually be individuals interested in the topic, not bored university classmates who spend half the time talking about other things because of their disinterest. This is all for free. Even discounting the cost, university education trails far behind other forms of learning. Once the cost is factored in, the only appeal ends up being the credentials and the four year summer camp environment. That's why when I see MOOCs brought up these days in the wild, it's usually from people who are taking them for credentials. Once credentials are taken away, MOOCs and universities just don't have a ton to offer for a motivated learner. It would be good if credentials and education were decoupled (for instance, like with the CFA), but there doesn't appear to be much of a push for that.

em-bee 2y ago
decoupling would really make a difference. i should be able to acquire knowledge however i want or am able to, and then pass a standardized process to get the accreditation. the problem with standardized tests however is that they lead to more schools just teaching for the test and not actually helping the students learn. it's tricky. depending on the subject or field. though i suppose papers and dissertations can be judged on their own merits. but other tests are trickier to do in a way that they can't just be passed by memorizing test knowledge.
- bnralt 2y ago
  Honestly, though, removing standardized testing usually just obfuscates the problem. There are many ways to game the system. The ubiquitous college cramming is usually about temporarily learning for the test the night before a big exam. It's better to work on improving transparent standards for credentials than to have tens of thousands of different standards that no one pays attention to and hoping that they're adequate, despite having no clue if that's actually the case.