The problem with MOOC forums are that they bring together students with very different expectations and attitudes toward education and learning. During the cou

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