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I'm currently enrolled in an online degree program at the University of Illinois, and while the teachers are good and the material is interesting and challengin

I'm currently enrolled in an online degree program at the University of Illinois, and while the teachers are good and the material is interesting and challenging, the class is fundamentally less engaging. The closest analogue I can think of is the difference between IM and a video chat. Many conventional college students use study groups to boost their success rates. What is preventing an online course from using video chat or something similar to the same end? (mandatory forums do not encourage engagement amongst students).

akg_67 13y ago
I agree with lack of interaction with MOOCs. I enrolled in three courses on Coursera and dropped out from two of them. The only one I completed, the instructor was engaging and interactive in the sense, he didn't show just the slides and read, he interacted with the slide. By the time, he finished the video, the slides were all written over in his handwriting. The one course I dropped because instructor was reading the slides in the videos. I can read slides faster myself, I don't need to watch a lengthy video and listen instructor read the slides. The second course dropped because instructor wasn't very good at explaining things. He will just show the slides but then ramble on. Though expert in his field, I got the impression that he wasn't a good teacher. Teaching is an art and not necessarily every expert can teach. The MOOCs need to be engaging, not just the topic wise but also instructor wise.
Pacabel 13y ago
The problem with MOOC forums are that they bring together students with very different expectations and attitudes toward education and learning. During the courses I took, I noticed certain trends. Students with Indian-looking names were often most concerned about the certificate of achievement given out after the course. In each course I'd see students asking if it were available yet well before the end of the course! I suspect that this may be due to the high importance that Indian society today places on the possession of credentials, even if there's insufficient knowledge and experience to back up those credentials. Likewise, questions about the marking scheme and grading were often coming from students with Asian-looking names. I suspect that this is due to the high degree of emphasis in many Asian societies that is placed upon obtaining extremely high grades in academic studies, even if these grades don't truly reflect understanding. And questions asking about exact midterm or exam content tended to come from students with Western European or American names. These societies tend to place a lot of emphasis on getting work done with minimal effort, including getting exam questions in advance to avoid unnecessary, from a grading perspective, studying. Bring together all of those students, and those types of questions can easily take up 70% or more of the discussion. That doesn't leave much room for other discussion. Even that discussion was usually lacking, due to many students not having a good grasp of the course's language of instruction. Bringing together students with different backgrounds may be a good thing, but too much difference is just as bad as extreme uniformity, if not worse. At least in the case of uniformity there is the similarity that the students have in common. - Pacabel
- JoeAltmaier 13y ago
  It would seem advantageous to partition discussion into threads. You give an excellent starting point.
- primitivesuave 13y ago
  This is an incredibly astute observation, although I've seen the most flagrant forms of cheating/avarice from Indian and Asian students who are simply trying to avoid studying. Asian and Indian society instills a much stronger desire to succeed on paper than intellectually, and I observed this when TA'ing for a CS class comprised primarily of international students. Throughout the semester I was getting 10 - 30 emails a day regarding petty grading/exam issues, with the occasional email from someone asking a real question.

akg_67 13y ago

I agree with lack of interaction with MOOCs. I enrolled in three courses on Coursera and dropped out from two of them. The only one I completed, the instructor was engaging and interactive in the sense, he didn't show just the slides and read, he interacted with the slide. By the time, he finished the video, the slides were all written over in his handwriting. The one course I dropped because instructor was reading the slides in the videos. I can read slides faster myself, I don't need to watch a lengthy video and listen instructor read the slides. The second course dropped because instructor wasn't very good at explaining things. He will just show the slides but then ramble on. Though expert in his field, I got the impression that he wasn't a good teacher. Teaching is an art and not necessarily every expert can teach. The MOOCs need to be engaging, not just the topic wise but also instructor wise.

Pacabel 13y ago

The problem with MOOC forums are that they bring together students with very different expectations and attitudes toward education and learning. During the courses I took, I noticed certain trends. Students with Indian-looking names were often most concerned about the certificate of achievement given out after the course. In each course I'd see students asking if it were available yet well before the end of the course! I suspect that this may be due to the high importance that Indian society today places on the possession of credentials, even if there's insufficient knowledge and experience to back up those credentials. Likewise, questions about the marking scheme and grading were often coming from students with Asian-looking names. I suspect that this is due to the high degree of emphasis in many Asian societies that is placed upon obtaining extremely high grades in academic studies, even if these grades don't truly reflect understanding. And questions asking about exact midterm or exam content tended to come from students with Western European or American names. These societies tend to place a lot of emphasis on getting work done with minimal effort, including getting exam questions in advance to avoid unnecessary, from a grading perspective, studying. Bring together all of those students, and those types of questions can easily take up 70% or more of the discussion. That doesn't leave much room for other discussion. Even that discussion was usually lacking, due to many students not having a good grasp of the course's language of instruction. Bringing together students with different backgrounds may be a good thing, but too much difference is just as bad as extreme uniformity, if not worse. At least in the case of uniformity there is the similarity that the students have in common. - Pacabel

JoeAltmaier 13y ago
It would seem advantageous to partition discussion into threads. You give an excellent starting point.
primitivesuave 13y ago
This is an incredibly astute observation, although I've seen the most flagrant forms of cheating/avarice from Indian and Asian students who are simply trying to avoid studying. Asian and Indian society instills a much stronger desire to succeed on paper than intellectually, and I observed this when TA'ing for a CS class comprised primarily of international students. Throughout the semester I was getting 10 - 30 emails a day regarding petty grading/exam issues, with the occasional email from someone asking a real question.