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I totally agree. To me, one of the advantages of these online classes is that they usually impose some kind of pace. It's something difficult to enforce when se
by yodsanklai 12y ago
I totally agree. To me, one of the advantages of these online classes is that they usually impose some kind of pace. It's something difficult to enforce when self-studying. Otherwise, I may as well read a book which I think is a better format than a video.
- jghn 12y agoThe problem, at least for me, is that there's no real incentive to get a "good grade" in those courses. I can't imagine one single employer actually caring that someone has an actual coursera course completion letter. So when I do those time sensitive classes, if life gets a bit busy and I can't keep up, I'll just skip that week. And then of course I'm kind of screwed as I likely don't have time to do 2x the coursework the following week and it snowballs. If instead it was self-paced I could go ahead of pace at will and behind pace at will. If I fell behind pace there I can still complete it AOK. And perhaps this is just me, but for some reason once I fall behind in the time sensitive classes I rarely manage to complete it on my own time. There's something subconsciously working on me with the time schedules such that I throw my hands up and say screw it.
- ghaff 12y agoSelf-pacing or very loose pacing also much makes any sort of discussion board or peer to peer interactions pretty much useless. Discussion boards have pretty horrible S/N ratios and other problems under the best of circumstances but with self-pacing you almost might as well not have them. And then, as you say, for a lot of topics it's then worth asking exactly what function the MOOC is serving that isn't served equally well or better in many cases than an appropriate book.