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You are constructing a pretty big strawman here. The author is saying that MOOCs don't offer the level of sociability that brick-and-mortar classes do. Somehow

by jwoah12 13y ago

You are constructing a pretty big strawman here. The author is saying that MOOCs don't offer the level of sociability that brick-and-mortar classes do. Somehow you morphed that (correct) statement into someone telling you that you don't deserve credit for not asking questions. The author is merely arguing that traditional classrooms aren't going away any time soon, since that socialization and interaction is valuable to many people, even if it isn't valuable to you.

VLM 13y ago
"Somehow you morphed that" The three arguments against were the discussed social interaction which was pushed pretty strongly, another claimed problem was credit was not available but when it was offered students wouldn't take for-credit classes (what does that mean, if anything?) and Blivens strange quote about minds needing to be built instead of stuffed. Based on experience in classrooms, where the usual 90:10 ratio shows 10% of the students are 90% of the interaction, and even the most biased claims showing at least a quarter of the population is introverted, that would indicate the percentage of people who prioritize social interaction must be somewhere between the two fairly ridiculous extremes, lets say 90% to 25%. However actual success rates are staggeringly worse, like single digit may as well round down to zero. So as simple engineering guess, the cause of failure simply cannot exclusively be lack of interaction. If that were the case, a more realistic failure rate would be 50% or so because probably somewhere around half the population cares about that based on examination of extreme claims. That leaves the article with little more than the usual "we all know the correct way for humans to live is to be extroverted, and clearly radio lectures / internet lectures are not an extroverts paradise, so lets marginalize the introverts and pat ourselves on the back for figuring that out to be the failure of MOOCs, how lame of them not to cater to our talkative desires as the masters". Eh, lame. Whatever the distance education problem is eventually correctly identified, its not going to be social interaction. Look at another technology that's completely non-interactive yet tremendously popular... watching TV. I suspect the true answer is likely to revolve around peer pressure and motivation. No one knows or cares if I drop a class or skip a video lecture, but if it went on my permanent facebook/google record, well, maybe I'd follow up... As for motivation I would agree that if possible to attend, sitting in class might be slightly better, and its so easy to attend class "somewhere" that anyone with the slightest spec of motivation is probably already sitting in a physical classroom leaving very few motivated people left for online classes. Not no one, just very few. Now those theories could have improved the article.
Gormo 13y ago
> The author is saying that MOOCs don't offer the level of sociability that brick-and-mortar classes do. Of course, this remains an invalid claim for entirely different reasons, unless you interpret it as admitting that the "level" of sociability of MOOCs is often higher than a bricks-and-mortar class. I recently completed an online master's program, offered by a traditional university, but in the MOOC format, with lectures in podcast format, and collaboration primarily via message boards, chat sessions similar to IRC, and email. There were conference calls as well, but the bulk of actual academic collaboration took place via text media. In-person meetings only occurred for one weekend in each semester. As I perceived it, the depth and sophistication of interaction and collaboration among students was significantly higher here than in any bricks-and-mortar course I've ever taken. I attribute this to the asynchronicity of communication (it's pretty hard to get a large group of people together at the same time and all in the mental state conducive to productive discourse) and to the fact that people just communicate better in writing than in verbal speech (assuming they can write effectively, at least; if so, it's much easier to convey complex inter-related ideas in a paragraph or two of text than it is to attempt to verbalize them in real-time). Quite like the comparing the experience of having a discussion on HN to discussing the same topic face-to-face with others, in fact. OTOH, if "sociability" refers to merely recreational activity like grabbing a beer after a lecture, then yeah, bricks-and-mortar wins. But what's that got to do with school? If I want to socialize for the sake of socializing, I can go out for a beer with my local friends instead of my classmates.

by jwoah12 13y ago

VLM 13y ago

"Somehow you morphed that" The three arguments against were the discussed social interaction which was pushed pretty strongly, another claimed problem was credit was not available but when it was offered students wouldn't take for-credit classes (what does that mean, if anything?) and Blivens strange quote about minds needing to be built instead of stuffed. Based on experience in classrooms, where the usual 90:10 ratio shows 10% of the students are 90% of the interaction, and even the most biased claims showing at least a quarter of the population is introverted, that would indicate the percentage of people who prioritize social interaction must be somewhere between the two fairly ridiculous extremes, lets say 90% to 25%. However actual success rates are staggeringly worse, like single digit may as well round down to zero. So as simple engineering guess, the cause of failure simply cannot exclusively be lack of interaction. If that were the case, a more realistic failure rate would be 50% or so because probably somewhere around half the population cares about that based on examination of extreme claims. That leaves the article with little more than the usual "we all know the correct way for humans to live is to be extroverted, and clearly radio lectures / internet lectures are not an extroverts paradise, so lets marginalize the introverts and pat ourselves on the back for figuring that out to be the failure of MOOCs, how lame of them not to cater to our talkative desires as the masters". Eh, lame. Whatever the distance education problem is eventually correctly identified, its not going to be social interaction. Look at another technology that's completely non-interactive yet tremendously popular... watching TV. I suspect the true answer is likely to revolve around peer pressure and motivation. No one knows or cares if I drop a class or skip a video lecture, but if it went on my permanent facebook/google record, well, maybe I'd follow up... As for motivation I would agree that if possible to attend, sitting in class might be slightly better, and its so easy to attend class "somewhere" that anyone with the slightest spec of motivation is probably already sitting in a physical classroom leaving very few motivated people left for online classes. Not no one, just very few. Now those theories could have improved the article.

Gormo 13y ago

> The author is saying that MOOCs don't offer the level of sociability that brick-and-mortar classes do. Of course, this remains an invalid claim for entirely different reasons, unless you interpret it as admitting that the "level" of sociability of MOOCs is often higher than a bricks-and-mortar class. I recently completed an online master's program, offered by a traditional university, but in the MOOC format, with lectures in podcast format, and collaboration primarily via message boards, chat sessions similar to IRC, and email. There were conference calls as well, but the bulk of actual academic collaboration took place via text media. In-person meetings only occurred for one weekend in each semester. As I perceived it, the depth and sophistication of interaction and collaboration among students was significantly higher here than in any bricks-and-mortar course I've ever taken. I attribute this to the asynchronicity of communication (it's pretty hard to get a large group of people together at the same time and all in the mental state conducive to productive discourse) and to the fact that people just communicate better in writing than in verbal speech (assuming they can write effectively, at least; if so, it's much easier to convey complex inter-related ideas in a paragraph or two of text than it is to attempt to verbalize them in real-time). Quite like the comparing the experience of having a discussion on HN to discussing the same topic face-to-face with others, in fact. OTOH, if "sociability" refers to merely recreational activity like grabbing a beer after a lecture, then yeah, bricks-and-mortar wins. But what's that got to do with school? If I want to socialize for the sake of socializing, I can go out for a beer with my local friends instead of my classmates.