3 ms·

I really like your idea of "reaching" here. I think that in the MOOC model, the role of the MOOC is to help the professor extend their reach towards the student

by pkrein 14y ago

I really like your idea of "reaching" here. I think that in the MOOC model, the role of the MOOC is to help the professor extend their reach towards the students. I think the MOOC should bring the content marketing & designe experts to the table with the professor and help put together the front-end of the class. Part of that means helping the professor craft every email to the class to maximize engagement. In fact, the professor probably shouldn't even be doing _any_ of that administrative stuff. The MOOC should handle all of that, including the skills required to "extend the reach towards the students" as you aptly put it. I think Coursera and EdX can do much better at using their design and content marketing talent to make these classes more accessible and successful.

eah13 14y ago
> I think Coursera and EdX can do much better at using their design and content marketing talent to make these classes more accessible and successful. There's an interesting balance here. Professors I've talked to bemoan the lack of 'support' from Coursera (usually the universities provide a pot of money for profs to use themselves). But at the same time they would balk at some marketing guru coming in an 'spinning' their course. Profs are used to large amounts of freedom in their courses and aren't used to incorporating feedback from the outside into their plans. It's a tough line to walk I think: freedom vs accessibility.
- pkrein 14y ago
  oh i don't mean a marketing person who "spins" the course. but rather somebody who understands what messages to deliver to which students when. for example, if I haven't done any of the assignments in 3 weeks, telling me about admin for the upcoming exam is worthless. a designer and a content specialist understand this deeply and can help make the professor's communications more effective. "spinning" them would be worse...
  - eah13 14y ago
    Oh, definitely. I think a TA role like this that would help customize delivery, answer questions, and motivate would be great. I'm not sure its happening. But regardless, I think many profs would feel like marketing help of any kind would be more like spinning content to make it more attractive to students, and worry about the integrity of what they're teaching.
graycat 14y ago
Some of what you are saying is the way to solve some of the problems I mentioned, e.g., poor video and sound quality. Some more of what you are saying, e.g., about marketing, design, and e-mails to students, definitely would help. However, I assumed that such things were asking too much of poor schools and that, really, the HN readers who dug through K&R, etc. on their own with no marketing, design, encouraging e-mails, etc. didn't really need such nice hand holding. But I will say, at some crucial points for me, some teachers did play a crucial role: The college I graduated from then had a quite good math department, and some of the teaching aimed at me personally in some of the courses was just excellent and got me going so that I could continue on to 'the next level' in math via independent work. Then for on-line learning, as progress is made on the first, and easiest work, many of the students will need some 'personalized TLC' or risk getting off track, slowing down, and stopping. Part of such TLC will be overviews: That is, it needs to be more clear to students what the value, purpose, or promise is of various parts of the course. Another part of TLC is that students need to write some things, e.g., homework exercises, term papers, something like lab reports, and have their work read by an expert and 'corrected'. E.g., a place to learn nicely polished skills in writing about functions, maps, mappings, relations, etc. is in a theorem proving course in abstract algebra where a good professor actually corrects some student homework. Then when work with functions, maps, ..., in computing, will get the notation and terminology right; without such TLC, often won't get those things right. E.g., earlier today I read a little about hashing passwords, and the material mentioned a function "between the hashes and passwords". No, "between" is not appropriate. The usual description, and appropriate, is a function f from the set of hashes to the set of passwords. To be clear and not just picky, function f may not define a function g from the set of passwords to the set of hashes because there may be a password p such that there is no hash h so that f(h) = p. That is, the function f may not be 'onto', i.e., 'surjective' as at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surjective_function The level of clarity and precision available, useful, and often important is high, but students commonly need some in-person, TLC teaching in such things. There's an old lesson in 'education': Get the student able to continue on in learning on their own. For that, usually some 'personalized TLC' is needed at a few crucial points in a student's development. To be really successful, the on-line approach will have to include some of that TLC also.

by pkrein 14y ago

eah13 14y ago

> I think Coursera and EdX can do much better at using their design and content marketing talent to make these classes more accessible and successful. There's an interesting balance here. Professors I've talked to bemoan the lack of 'support' from Coursera (usually the universities provide a pot of money for profs to use themselves). But at the same time they would balk at some marketing guru coming in an 'spinning' their course. Profs are used to large amounts of freedom in their courses and aren't used to incorporating feedback from the outside into their plans. It's a tough line to walk I think: freedom vs accessibility.

pkrein 14y ago
oh i don't mean a marketing person who "spins" the course. but rather somebody who understands what messages to deliver to which students when. for example, if I haven't done any of the assignments in 3 weeks, telling me about admin for the upcoming exam is worthless. a designer and a content specialist understand this deeply and can help make the professor's communications more effective. "spinning" them would be worse...
- eah13 14y ago
  Oh, definitely. I think a TA role like this that would help customize delivery, answer questions, and motivate would be great. I'm not sure its happening. But regardless, I think many profs would feel like marketing help of any kind would be more like spinning content to make it more attractive to students, and worry about the integrity of what they're teaching.

graycat 14y ago

Some of what you are saying is the way to solve some of the problems I mentioned, e.g., poor video and sound quality. Some more of what you are saying, e.g., about marketing, design, and e-mails to students, definitely would help. However, I assumed that such things were asking too much of poor schools and that, really, the HN readers who dug through K&R, etc. on their own with no marketing, design, encouraging e-mails, etc. didn't really need such nice hand holding. But I will say, at some crucial points for me, some teachers did play a crucial role: The college I graduated from then had a quite good math department, and some of the teaching aimed at me personally in some of the courses was just excellent and got me going so that I could continue on to 'the next level' in math via independent work. Then for on-line learning, as progress is made on the first, and easiest work, many of the students will need some 'personalized TLC' or risk getting off track, slowing down, and stopping. Part of such TLC will be overviews: That is, it needs to be more clear to students what the value, purpose, or promise is of various parts of the course. Another part of TLC is that students need to write some things, e.g., homework exercises, term papers, something like lab reports, and have their work read by an expert and 'corrected'. E.g., a place to learn nicely polished skills in writing about functions, maps, mappings, relations, etc. is in a theorem proving course in abstract algebra where a good professor actually corrects some student homework. Then when work with functions, maps, ..., in computing, will get the notation and terminology right; without such TLC, often won't get those things right. E.g., earlier today I read a little about hashing passwords, and the material mentioned a function "between the hashes and passwords". No, "between" is not appropriate. The usual description, and appropriate, is a function f from the set of hashes to the set of passwords. To be clear and not just picky, function f may not define a function g from the set of passwords to the set of hashes because there may be a password p such that there is no hash h so that f(h) = p. That is, the function f may not be 'onto', i.e., 'surjective' as at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surjective_function The level of clarity and precision available, useful, and often important is high, but students commonly need some in-person, TLC teaching in such things. There's an old lesson in 'education': Get the student able to continue on in learning on their own. For that, usually some 'personalized TLC' is needed at a few crucial points in a student's development. To be really successful, the on-line approach will have to include some of that TLC also.