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I've discussed this with several other hiring managers I know. We've all taken at least one MOOC course, and while they may be useful for the learning experienc
by Pacabel 12y ago
I've discussed this with several other hiring managers I know. We've all taken at least one MOOC course, and while they may be useful for the learning experience, we agreed that we couldn't trust the credentials.
One trend that we all noticed is for students, nearly always from developing nations, to focus solely on the credentials and very little on the course material itself.
Even before the courses were complete, with coursework submission deadlines still looming, we'd see people post stuff like "I'm still waiting for my certificate! When will I get it?" in the courses' discussion forums.
After the course had completed and the certificates were awarded, there would inevitably be many more of these students asking why they haven't received theirs, even after openly admitting to not doing most or even all of the required coursework.
For these people, it was all about getting a PDF of a certificate containing their names. Learning anything at all wasn't even a consideration.
While traditional academic institutions may have similar problems, it's never to such an extreme as with MOOCs. At least students at any reputable institution will have had to demonstrate at least some understanding of the material being taught.
- waps 12y agoThis was true for at least 80-90% of CS grads at least in my year in a real university. They were going for the degree and were smart enough to get in that way. Very few were interested in the material itself. But yes, once employed as a developer consultant, I must say, at university people were way more interested in the material at university. That's mostly a way to say that it's extremely rare to find even a single person interested in CS at most developer employers though.
- dannyking 12y agoAccredible has done a lot of work to try and address the concerns that hiring managers have with online learning. The top 3 concerns we have identified are: 1. How do I know if you really did the course? 2. How do I know how seriously you took the course? Did you just browse through it passively or did you really do every assignment and maximize your learning? 3. How do I know if the course was high quality or of sufficient depth? I believe the best way to address these concerns is to change the structure of the credential itself to have evidence of learning embedded into it. We (Accredible) have been working with some MOOC providers to create a portfolio credential tailored for this kind of situation - currently in trials and going well! So, hopefully, once the credential formats update to match the learning environment, this will become much less of an issue.