3 ms·

Well, how do you define a course? For me, it's a series of individual lectures / modules that each teach you a given concept belonging to the same topic (that o

Well, how do you define a course? For me, it's a series of individual lectures / modules that each teach you a given concept belonging to the same topic (that of the course). Concepts will often be dependent on each other, i.e. you will need to first understand concept A in order to be able to understand concept B. So, taking apart a course and splitting it into modules might make a lot of sense, since it allows students to only learn what is most relevant to them at the time and be rewarded for their learning successes more easily and more often. Considering the horrendous dropout rates of most MOOC platforms this might be a very good way to incentivize students to "keep at it". However, this makes only sense if the individual modules are independent enough, so that students can learn about them individually (which, for many courses might not be the case). For me, the concept of a "course" is mostly obsolete when delivering educational content online, and is probably mainly still in use because everyone understands what it means. It might even be a good example of skeuomorphism in this sense: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph I currently work on a (real-world) course platform that allows people to take "micro-courses" which can be completed in one single evening session and which (mostly) build upon each other. Like this, students can decide more easily which skills they want to learn, get results faster and spend less money on the course. A concept which is similarly outdated (in my opiniion) is that of a scientific journal: These were created to (physically) group articles from a given field together so that they could be distributed to people working in that field. Digital distribution through the Internet makes this obsolete, since articles can be simply grouped using tags (or other meta-information). Like this, the concept of a "journal" gets replaced by that of a "view" on a group of articles that are similar in a given way, such as "all articles in the field of biophysics published last year", or "all articles [across all domains] that investigate sleep patterns". Using views instead of a journals is vastly superior (again, in my opinion) since it allows you to search for knowledge spanning different disciplines and fields of research.

nitrogen 12y ago
Considering the horrendous dropout rates of most MOOC platforms this might be a very good way to incentivize students to "keep at it". I don't think a high drop rate for MOOCs is a problem in the slightest. They should be evaluated like any other funnel on the web, where even 1% can be a good completion rate, rather than like paid lecture courses.
- narrator 12y ago
  The dropout rate in higher education is a big problem because the marginal cost is high for each student (e.g classroom space, heating, cooling, electricity, parking, etc). The marginal cost for each additional MOOC student is almost zero so it doesn't really matter if there's a high dropout rate.
- codexjourneys 12y ago
  Yeah, re: the dropout rate, I think registering for a MOOC is more like browsing a book than registering for a college class. If I get through week 3 or 4 and take a midterm, then I find I tend to stick with the MOOC and finish it. Without that momentum, it gets saved for later and I sometimes return to browse the content long after the class ends. More like a book.
jimbokun 12y ago
The remaining "value" of journals is as a brand. One journal may have a reputation as being more selective than another, so a reader might assume the quality of the research is higher, or more novel, or whatever other attributes are associated with the brand. Whether this is true or a helpful distinction is another matter, but it does distinguish the journal approach from what you describe.

nitrogen 12y ago

Considering the horrendous dropout rates of most MOOC platforms this might be a very good way to incentivize students to "keep at it". I don't think a high drop rate for MOOCs is a problem in the slightest. They should be evaluated like any other funnel on the web, where even 1% can be a good completion rate, rather than like paid lecture courses.

narrator 12y ago
The dropout rate in higher education is a big problem because the marginal cost is high for each student (e.g classroom space, heating, cooling, electricity, parking, etc). The marginal cost for each additional MOOC student is almost zero so it doesn't really matter if there's a high dropout rate.
codexjourneys 12y ago
Yeah, re: the dropout rate, I think registering for a MOOC is more like browsing a book than registering for a college class. If I get through week 3 or 4 and take a midterm, then I find I tend to stick with the MOOC and finish it. Without that momentum, it gets saved for later and I sometimes return to browse the content long after the class ends. More like a book.

jimbokun 12y ago

The remaining "value" of journals is as a brand. One journal may have a reputation as being more selective than another, so a reader might assume the quality of the research is higher, or more novel, or whatever other attributes are associated with the brand. Whether this is true or a helpful distinction is another matter, but it does distinguish the journal approach from what you describe.