4 ms·

Then your MOOC is the entire internet.

by jrs99 12y ago

solarmist 12y ago
Not really, he still want the structured learning with video lectures that has a clear path, he just wants to be able to take it and run rather than being forced to crawl/walk though the material.
toomuchtodo 12y ago
An MOOC for a subject is truly just a big wikipedia article. Text, video, audio resources curated by someone. Hopefully MOOCs will eventually be similar to epub books; open format, meta data, a collection of digital objects.
- odower 12y ago
  We're not focused on curriculum, but rather a collection of content around a subject at https://curiosity.com https://curiosity.com. Wiki, text, video, audio...people learn different ways in different order unless they're made to do otherwise. We're focused on the always curious person. MOOCs serve a different purpose so hard to see them going more unstructured.
- dthal 12y ago
  "An MOOC for a subject is truly just a big wikipedia article." I don't agree with this. I've taken several online courses at EdX (EE, AI) Coursera(ML, PGM) and Udacity(Web App, Hadoop), and the things that are in the online classes that are not in a Wikipedia article - other students, homework with deadlines - are a large part of the value provided.
joshontheweb 12y ago
This is definitely true to a degree. It doesn't work well for all things though. For instance, I am particularly interested in Electrical Engineering (I want to build modular synthesizers) right now. I have no foundation in it and I found some MIT lectures on youtube. They were awesome but sadly the lecture series was incomplete. I know I could just read a book but they tend to be very dense. Having the lectures was super helpful. I see these MOOCs as a way to open these lectures to the world. They just need to not try and fit it into the old style. Truly voracious and driven students should be able to progress at their own pace while having high quality presentations. Scheduled curriculum feels like a huge barrier to me. I'm not inclined to pay for a scheduled curriculum where I would pay for a all-at-once lecture series.

Then your MOOC is the entire internet.

by jrs99 12y ago

Then your MOOC is the entire internet.

Not really, he still want the structured learning with video lectures that has a clear path, he just wants to be able to take it and run rather than being forced to crawl/walk though the material.

toomuchtodo 12y ago

An MOOC for a subject is truly just a big wikipedia article. Text, video, audio resources curated by someone. Hopefully MOOCs will eventually be similar to epub books; open format, meta data, a collection of digital objects.

odower 12y ago
We're not focused on curriculum, but rather a collection of content around a subject at https://curiosity.com https://curiosity.com. Wiki, text, video, audio...people learn different ways in different order unless they're made to do otherwise. We're focused on the always curious person. MOOCs serve a different purpose so hard to see them going more unstructured.
dthal 12y ago
"An MOOC for a subject is truly just a big wikipedia article." I don't agree with this. I've taken several online courses at EdX (EE, AI) Coursera(ML, PGM) and Udacity(Web App, Hadoop), and the things that are in the online classes that are not in a Wikipedia article - other students, homework with deadlines - are a large part of the value provided.

joshontheweb 12y ago

This is definitely true to a degree. It doesn't work well for all things though. For instance, I am particularly interested in Electrical Engineering (I want to build modular synthesizers) right now. I have no foundation in it and I found some MIT lectures on youtube. They were awesome but sadly the lecture series was incomplete. I know I could just read a book but they tend to be very dense. Having the lectures was super helpful. I see these MOOCs as a way to open these lectures to the world. They just need to not try and fit it into the old style. Truly voracious and driven students should be able to progress at their own pace while having high quality presentations. Scheduled curriculum feels like a huge barrier to me. I'm not inclined to pay for a scheduled curriculum where I would pay for a all-at-once lecture series.