4 ms·

I usually sign up for a bunch of classes just so I can access the material at a later point when I have time or when I'm interested. I'm pretty sure that in mos

by tkahn6 14y ago

I usually sign up for a bunch of classes just so I can access the material at a later point when I have time or when I'm interested. I'm pretty sure that in most cases Coursera locks you out of old material unless you were enrolled. I don't follow along with the class. Synchronous learning, IMO, is an anachronism. We have video recording technology, practically infinite bandwidth, and near speed of light communication. The idea of synchronous learning, where you have five thousand teachers teaching the same Calculus I class every year, is predicated on a world where these technologies don't exist. As an aside, for this reason I think the collegiate model is going to completely change in the near future as people start realizing how absurd it is. The real value professors provide is having someone to answer questions (and in a lot of cases, professors don't even take questions during lecture). And even that functionality can and is (in my experience) mostly replaced by other students in the class or students who have already taken the class. Put the material up, and let communities form around it. I don't need the professor to answer my questions, all I need is the relevant forum (in the original sense) to ask.

Retric 14y ago
Only terrible calculus teachers/class setups don't respond to student questions. Until you can do the same thing with a video there is going to be a gap. Traditional collage classes are generally based on the idea that ~1/3 of the time is synchronous learning in a classroom with a teacher 2/3 is self study. Have a 3 hour class expect 6+ hours of homework / projects on average. With that said, most classes don't spend a lot of time on questions, but they occur at the right time as in right in the middle of a lecture or right after it. Presumably online videos could let you cut down on some class time, but even 1 hour after watching a video your going to forget some of your questions and much of the context of other questions you remember. PS: If you took calculus in a setting of 500 people where you could not ask questions you still got ripped off even if there was a teacher in the room.
- tkahn6 14y ago
  You can do the same with a video. You pause it, get on a relevant IRC channel or internet forum and ask "what does she mean by X at 23:51?" Or you Google the term or process you were confused about and find someone else's explanation (I have personally done this loads of times). Or you turn to the person you're watching it with and ask. Or you call up your study group on skype. Do those two latter things usually happen now? No, but they easily, easily could if this type of learning became mainstream. Is having a professor there that you can ask immediately in the moment (and interrupt the lecture for the other students who understood the material) worth $1000 per credit hour?
rjtavares 14y ago
That's why I prefer Udacity's approach: they have the tradicional weekly classes when they open the course, but after that they're open enrolment. Start and finnish anytime you want. Unfortunately, they have much less courses available, and they're all more or less computer science related.
michaelt 14y ago
I usually sign up for a bunch of classes just so I can access the material at a later point when I have time or when I'm interested. How many of those classes have you done the work for? Personally I find the synchronous model helps me complete the course, as it removes the temptation to put things off.
- scott_s 14y ago
  I think the synchronous model makes it easier to have small communities of students working through the same thing at the same time, helping each other.
  - notimetorelax 14y ago
    On top of that it makes work of TA easier. Everyone works more or less on the same problem, be it programming assignment, quiz, etc. If there's a new question TA most probably remember what was in the last lectures and what are the common issues students are having this week.
  - colin_jack 14y ago
    Same for me. I also find the assignments/exercises on the courses are first class and that's where a lot of the learning comes in especially when backed up by discussion forum activity from other students. Watching the videos on their own doesn't really appeal to me.
- khet 14y ago
  That may be but I personally find it extremely difficult to juggle my everyday working life with an online class. I would much rather download and watch a video lecture on the way to work.
  - queensnake 14y ago
    You can totally do that. The courses are 'synchronous' in calendar spans of time, not in lectures being broadcast live.
- 14y ago
spikels 14y ago
I have taken classes at several top private and public universities and except in a few smaller, more advanced classes few questions were asked during the professor's lectures. And only some of those questions were helpful to the majority of the class. Having discussed this with many other students I believe this is typical, at least in US universities. (I have heard it is even worse in European and Asian universities where interruptions are discouraged. Is this true?) I believe this is due to the constraints of the tradional class format. It is simply impossible to both cover the material and answer very many questions in typical length of a class. This means that if the class has more than a small number of students their questions simply cannot be answered during the lecture. This is why many larger classes are divided into sections with labs run by grad students. These smaller forums are are better for discussion but their quality depends on finding grad students who are good at teaching. This is also fundamentally not scalable. Online learning has the potential to break thru this limitation. The recent wave of MOOCs are a huge improvement over the online classes of just a few years ago. I believe there is still lots of room for improvement from both tailoring the class to the individual student (e.g fast vs slow pace) and A/B testing which has only just begun to be applied. Interestingly some of these improvements can be applied to tradional classes some of which are already using online discussion forums and automated grading. A hybrid approach (in person lectures and discussions with full online support) will probably provide the best overall quality but will be more expensive than a pure online approach and not practical for people who can't physically attend classes.
majani 14y ago
It's a reality that for most people, learning gets tedious after a while. The synchronous learning helps a lot of people drag themselves back into class when they're not really "feeling it."
Tycho 14y ago
Same with me - I signed up to loads of these things because I loved the idea. Turns out I didn't have time to actually do any of them, but it didn't cost me anything to sign up. I may at a later date search my inbox and access the material. It's not really a retention problem if you offer something for free and tons of people have a look without making much commitment. Having said that, probably the only relevant statistics about these courses are how many people did them and completed the assignments/tests.
fudged71 14y ago
Exactly this. I was almost offended when the course material was taken down or that I was 'locked out'; it seemed like it went against the whole idea of the online learning initiative. Quizzes and exams, okay, but learning materials should always be accessible! I used the database course to supplement a database course that I was taking at the same time, and it was not just a stark difference in quality but also fantastic that I could pick the pieces of material that I needed to learn better and watch those lectures at my speed and how I wanted! It's important to me that all course materials are available at the start of the course, and until at least a year after I take the course. Otherwise give me an easy way to download the course materials as a bundle to use in the future.

by tkahn6 14y ago

Retric 14y ago

Only terrible calculus teachers/class setups don't respond to student questions. Until you can do the same thing with a video there is going to be a gap. Traditional collage classes are generally based on the idea that ~1/3 of the time is synchronous learning in a classroom with a teacher 2/3 is self study. Have a 3 hour class expect 6+ hours of homework / projects on average. With that said, most classes don't spend a lot of time on questions, but they occur at the right time as in right in the middle of a lecture or right after it. Presumably online videos could let you cut down on some class time, but even 1 hour after watching a video your going to forget some of your questions and much of the context of other questions you remember. PS: If you took calculus in a setting of 500 people where you could not ask questions you still got ripped off even if there was a teacher in the room.

tkahn6 14y ago
You can do the same with a video. You pause it, get on a relevant IRC channel or internet forum and ask "what does she mean by X at 23:51?" Or you Google the term or process you were confused about and find someone else's explanation (I have personally done this loads of times). Or you turn to the person you're watching it with and ask. Or you call up your study group on skype. Do those two latter things usually happen now? No, but they easily, easily could if this type of learning became mainstream. Is having a professor there that you can ask immediately in the moment (and interrupt the lecture for the other students who understood the material) worth $1000 per credit hour?

rjtavares 14y ago

That's why I prefer Udacity's approach: they have the tradicional weekly classes when they open the course, but after that they're open enrolment. Start and finnish anytime you want. Unfortunately, they have much less courses available, and they're all more or less computer science related.

michaelt 14y ago

I usually sign up for a bunch of classes just so I can access the material at a later point when I have time or when I'm interested. How many of those classes have you done the work for? Personally I find the synchronous model helps me complete the course, as it removes the temptation to put things off.

scott_s 14y ago
I think the synchronous model makes it easier to have small communities of students working through the same thing at the same time, helping each other.
- notimetorelax 14y ago
  On top of that it makes work of TA easier. Everyone works more or less on the same problem, be it programming assignment, quiz, etc. If there's a new question TA most probably remember what was in the last lectures and what are the common issues students are having this week.
- colin_jack 14y ago
  Same for me. I also find the assignments/exercises on the courses are first class and that's where a lot of the learning comes in especially when backed up by discussion forum activity from other students. Watching the videos on their own doesn't really appeal to me.
khet 14y ago
That may be but I personally find it extremely difficult to juggle my everyday working life with an online class. I would much rather download and watch a video lecture on the way to work.
- queensnake 14y ago
  You can totally do that. The courses are 'synchronous' in calendar spans of time, not in lectures being broadcast live.
14y ago

spikels 14y ago

I have taken classes at several top private and public universities and except in a few smaller, more advanced classes few questions were asked during the professor's lectures. And only some of those questions were helpful to the majority of the class. Having discussed this with many other students I believe this is typical, at least in US universities. (I have heard it is even worse in European and Asian universities where interruptions are discouraged. Is this true?) I believe this is due to the constraints of the tradional class format. It is simply impossible to both cover the material and answer very many questions in typical length of a class. This means that if the class has more than a small number of students their questions simply cannot be answered during the lecture. This is why many larger classes are divided into sections with labs run by grad students. These smaller forums are are better for discussion but their quality depends on finding grad students who are good at teaching. This is also fundamentally not scalable. Online learning has the potential to break thru this limitation. The recent wave of MOOCs are a huge improvement over the online classes of just a few years ago. I believe there is still lots of room for improvement from both tailoring the class to the individual student (e.g fast vs slow pace) and A/B testing which has only just begun to be applied. Interestingly some of these improvements can be applied to tradional classes some of which are already using online discussion forums and automated grading. A hybrid approach (in person lectures and discussions with full online support) will probably provide the best overall quality but will be more expensive than a pure online approach and not practical for people who can't physically attend classes.

majani 14y ago

It's a reality that for most people, learning gets tedious after a while. The synchronous learning helps a lot of people drag themselves back into class when they're not really "feeling it."

Tycho 14y ago

Same with me - I signed up to loads of these things because I loved the idea. Turns out I didn't have time to actually do any of them, but it didn't cost me anything to sign up. I may at a later date search my inbox and access the material. It's not really a retention problem if you offer something for free and tons of people have a look without making much commitment. Having said that, probably the only relevant statistics about these courses are how many people did them and completed the assignments/tests.

fudged71 14y ago

Exactly this. I was almost offended when the course material was taken down or that I was 'locked out'; it seemed like it went against the whole idea of the online learning initiative. Quizzes and exams, okay, but learning materials should always be accessible! I used the database course to supplement a database course that I was taking at the same time, and it was not just a stark difference in quality but also fantastic that I could pick the pieces of material that I needed to learn better and watch those lectures at my speed and how I wanted! It's important to me that all course materials are available at the start of the course, and until at least a year after I take the course. Otherwise give me an easy way to download the course materials as a bundle to use in the future.