3 ms·

You should title this article "How to cheapen the online education experience". You may be right, that edX and Coursera require a big commitment, but that's wha

You should title this article "How to cheapen the online education experience". You may be right, that edX and Coursera require a big commitment, but that's what learning requires. Do you want to play games for an hour, or do you want to advance your skills and understanding? (I've completed the Codeacademy Javascript track, and a full Coursera class (livin' in the 5%, wooo!)). You say Codeacademy got it right, but I think you're dead wrong. As other articles today have pointed out, at best you're going to learn syntax on codeacademy, and the most basic programming principles, but you'll be miles away from being a capable programmer. The jump from the online editor with tiny little exercises to setting up your own environment and programming your own project is huge. Many of their lessons give misleading or outright incorrect information, not to mention teaching you bad practices. What this article says is the huge barrier to entry, is not a barrier to entry to online education, but a barrier to entry of learning. What the author proposes is solutions to hide the barrier of learning, by gamifying the platforms and making them more "fun" with a disregard for the depth of effectiveness, and the consequences of pursuing such techniques. (Obviously I'm delving into opinion land, but I strongly believe gamification cheapens and platform and doesn't produce the deep engagement necessary for learning. This is my assessment from my experiences, I'm not going to tell someone their wrong for feeling differently about this. But I think if you wanted to create a deeper experience from gamifying education, it would take a tremendous effort, far different from the typical "Wow you completed 5 exercises! ZOMG KEEP GOING!" joke of rewards that other websites have. I don't want to rail on the online education effort either, but this is plain cheap thinking. Coursera and EdX are doing an excellent job, but they certainly have many problems to surmount. They've definitely solved the problem of higher education accessibility, now the problems they have are in the effectiveness of education, and on administration and grading that gets the f#$% out of the way of learning. But making it "easier to learn"? I call utter bulls$%t.

asafira 14y ago
I think I agree with most of your points, but disagree with your disapproval of "easier to learn". The presentation of material really makes a gigantic difference on how well you learn the material (if at all). While I agree that coursera and edX shouldn't hasten towards "gamification" of any sort, I think there is plenty of work in making the classes of better quality, and I think that _will_ make it easier to learn. I was taking a course on coursera where I thought the professor was talking too quickly --- so I actually slowed it down to 75% the pace in the video. Awesome! I was happy to be able to do that. Otherwise though, I don't think the course was presented that well. For one, lectures were shitty recordings of slides; I was looking at nothing but text and static images for entire lectures (never seeing the professor's face), and they were blurry, hard to read, and just hard to understand. Of _course_ that makes it harder to learn! I have to focus on figuring out what the hell is written there! And there was no (free) textbook for the course. Anyway, I think the point I am just trying to make is that while the author of this article might be suggesting to Coursera to take steps in questionable directions, I DO think a lot of those courses could be better polished, and that would make it easier to learn from them.
- Jormundir 14y ago
  Very agreed. There's certainly much these online courses can do in the lecture quality department alone. (Maybe they just need more quality control instead of a rush to fill their sites with content). I think you can do a lot to make the learning process much smoother and more streamlined. My opposition to the suggestions in the article is on the grounds that the author is searching for a shortcut to the learning process (or maybe just wants a really addicting, very shallow introduction to the topics), which is exactly opposite of what these sites are aiming to achieve. I'm all for making these platforms more fun, engaging and rewarding. The more the better. But my main point is that the focus, the most important aspect of education is the process of learning and that often requires prolonged focus (to follow along and venture all the way down the rabbit hole of a subject), deep engagement (so your brain can make all of the connections, tie all of the strings together), and interest. The authors suggestions don't really reinforce the process of learning (as I know), they may even weaken it by creating distractions, giving rewards for too little work (obviously subjective, but being subjective you're going to help some people sometimes, and hurt some people sometimes) and getting students to focus on the rewards rather than their understanding, and rather than building implicit positive feelings about their accomplishments.

asafira 14y ago

I think I agree with most of your points, but disagree with your disapproval of "easier to learn". The presentation of material really makes a gigantic difference on how well you learn the material (if at all). While I agree that coursera and edX shouldn't hasten towards "gamification" of any sort, I think there is plenty of work in making the classes of better quality, and I think that _will_ make it easier to learn. I was taking a course on coursera where I thought the professor was talking too quickly --- so I actually slowed it down to 75% the pace in the video. Awesome! I was happy to be able to do that. Otherwise though, I don't think the course was presented that well. For one, lectures were shitty recordings of slides; I was looking at nothing but text and static images for entire lectures (never seeing the professor's face), and they were blurry, hard to read, and just hard to understand. Of _course_ that makes it harder to learn! I have to focus on figuring out what the hell is written there! And there was no (free) textbook for the course. Anyway, I think the point I am just trying to make is that while the author of this article might be suggesting to Coursera to take steps in questionable directions, I DO think a lot of those courses could be better polished, and that would make it easier to learn from them.

Jormundir 14y ago
Very agreed. There's certainly much these online courses can do in the lecture quality department alone. (Maybe they just need more quality control instead of a rush to fill their sites with content). I think you can do a lot to make the learning process much smoother and more streamlined. My opposition to the suggestions in the article is on the grounds that the author is searching for a shortcut to the learning process (or maybe just wants a really addicting, very shallow introduction to the topics), which is exactly opposite of what these sites are aiming to achieve. I'm all for making these platforms more fun, engaging and rewarding. The more the better. But my main point is that the focus, the most important aspect of education is the process of learning and that often requires prolonged focus (to follow along and venture all the way down the rabbit hole of a subject), deep engagement (so your brain can make all of the connections, tie all of the strings together), and interest. The authors suggestions don't really reinforce the process of learning (as I know), they may even weaken it by creating distractions, giving rewards for too little work (obviously subjective, but being subjective you're going to help some people sometimes, and hurt some people sometimes) and getting students to focus on the rewards rather than their understanding, and rather than building implicit positive feelings about their accomplishments.