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The argument seems to be that MOOCs are the online equivalent of lectures. Therefore, since lectures do not seem to hold much financial value to customers, MOO

by tarr11 12y ago

The argument seems to be that MOOCs are the online equivalent of lectures. Therefore, since lectures do not seem to hold much financial value to customers, MOOCs will not either, since they consist mostly of online lectures. Though this may be true in practice for some MOOCs, I suspect that MOOCs are attempting to become the online equivalent of a university, rather than just lectures. With an online university, you are paying for the course curriculum, online tools, office hours, graded results, certification, social network and the brand of the institution. The combination of those things holds more value than the lecture itself.

visarga 12y ago
> With an online university, you are paying for the course curriculum, online tools, office hours, graded results, certification, social network and the brand of the institution. An essential thing missing from MOOCs is the feeling of being personally supervised and accountable to someone (our teachers or their assistants). It might seem just emotional fluff, but it is essential in getting people through long courses. I think MOOCs should be paired with in-person supervision, the kind offered by a coach or an educational advisor. Other people should still be involved in the loop, it must not degenerate into a solely man-computer thing. MOOCs need more emotional grounding to help decrease the atrocious drop rate.
- dogma1138 12y ago
  Many courses on Coursera, edX and similar sites are supervised while they are live. If you enroll to a "live" MOOC you actually get most of it, as well as interaction with other students. If you go trough an archived course you don't really get it and that's when the "MOOC" turns from a course to an information source. Considering that "MOOC's" are supposed to be an online resource i don't see how an in-person supervision can be achieved regardless of the fees. This is again an issue of miss managing expectations, what you describe amounts to an open university and not an online course. Open Uni's do offer everything from educational advisers to pre-arranged study groups and access to teachers and TA's but they also come at a cost ranging from anywhere from 50% to 200% of the normal cost of a degree. People drop out of anything and while MOOC's have a much higher drop out rate than normal education it has much less to do with what they offer and more to do with how people treat and what they expect from them in the first place. In the course of my job i actually have taken quite a few of them when i needed to tackle projects with an unfamiliar scope for example I've taken several "economics" classes when i had to do a project regarding stock and high frequency trading. I'm an information security consultant, and although i am quite familiar with traditional finance systems used for banking, i didn't have enough knowledge of how stock trading and HFT works to be able to truly identify critical issue with such systems (mainly in regards to discovering logic flaws, race conditions and similar issues). So I've found 3 courses i thought would give me enough information and invested the time needed in them. I did "drop" 2 of them but just because they went too deep into economical theories which wasn't what i needed. But i did complete one of them until the end and learned quite a bit from it about how modern day commodity trading works. But I've also treated the "MOOC" as i would any other course I've started at 9 am, finished at 5-6pm and actually structured it like if i were at school or at working (which technically I was). People who just consume online courses when they get bored over the weekends or when they have their 2am "life changing resolutions" will never be able to get anything out of them even with all the guidance in the world. A coach or an adviser will not make any one capable of learning on a bus or at 11pm after a full work day, a gym and a bar visit. There is a reason why night school has higher drop rates than normal school and it's because it's harder. People need energy and the ability to focus on education otherwise it's just a waste of time. And if you sitting in a class from 6-9 is borderline possible for education than what good will it be when you consume it on a tablet while trying not to make eye contact on the train?
- ansible 12y ago
  MOOCs need more emotional grounding to help decrease the atrocious drop rate. I see many people express concern about the drop rate of MOOCs, but I haven't seen any good arguments as to why it is a problem. I've signed up for several courses, and not finished one of them! So what? I didn't cost me anything, and I didn't hurt anyone by taking up a spot in the class that would instead have gone to a more deserving student. In a couple cases, it is simply that I've got a more than full-time job, and I just don't always have the time and energy to work on a class too. If I'd been paying money for it, I probably would have taken it more seriously, but oh well. I still learned something from most of them, and it was in general worth my time to at least listen to the lectures and look at the homework assignments. I'm still working through one of them... slowly, interleaving it with all the other things occupying my free time.
nkurz 12y ago
The argument seems to be that MOOCs are the online equivalent of lectures. Therefore, since lectures do not seem to hold much financial value to customers, MOOCs will not either, since they consist mostly of online lectures. I think you misunderstand the author's argument. Daniel is actually a professor at something very close to the well-rounded online university you describe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Télé-université http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Télé-université I think he's arguing that by keeping the content closed to all but registered users, the MOOC's would seem to be saying that they believe the lectures are the crown jewels that need to be protected from onlookers. He believes this is silly, and instead (apart from moments of cynicism when he worries that universities merely sell credentials) believes that the value distance learning can offer --- and charge for --- is the same "full package" that you describe. He's claiming that if the people running the MOOC's properly understood this, rather than restricting access to the content of their courses, they'd be making better use of their online content (the part that is very difficult to charge for) to recruit new students. I suspect that he's also motivated by the side benefit that this would provide free educational tools to those unable to 'attend' without doing any harm to the MOOC.

by tarr11 12y ago

The argument seems to be that MOOCs are the online equivalent of lectures. Therefore, since lectures do not seem to hold much financial value to customers, MOOCs will not either, since they consist mostly of online lectures. Though this may be true in practice for some MOOCs, I suspect that MOOCs are attempting to become the online equivalent of a university, rather than just lectures. With an online university, you are paying for the course curriculum, online tools, office hours, graded results, certification, social network and the brand of the institution. The combination of those things holds more value than the lecture itself.

visarga 12y ago

> With an online university, you are paying for the course curriculum, online tools, office hours, graded results, certification, social network and the brand of the institution. An essential thing missing from MOOCs is the feeling of being personally supervised and accountable to someone (our teachers or their assistants). It might seem just emotional fluff, but it is essential in getting people through long courses. I think MOOCs should be paired with in-person supervision, the kind offered by a coach or an educational advisor. Other people should still be involved in the loop, it must not degenerate into a solely man-computer thing. MOOCs need more emotional grounding to help decrease the atrocious drop rate.

dogma1138 12y ago
Many courses on Coursera, edX and similar sites are supervised while they are live. If you enroll to a "live" MOOC you actually get most of it, as well as interaction with other students. If you go trough an archived course you don't really get it and that's when the "MOOC" turns from a course to an information source. Considering that "MOOC's" are supposed to be an online resource i don't see how an in-person supervision can be achieved regardless of the fees. This is again an issue of miss managing expectations, what you describe amounts to an open university and not an online course. Open Uni's do offer everything from educational advisers to pre-arranged study groups and access to teachers and TA's but they also come at a cost ranging from anywhere from 50% to 200% of the normal cost of a degree. People drop out of anything and while MOOC's have a much higher drop out rate than normal education it has much less to do with what they offer and more to do with how people treat and what they expect from them in the first place. In the course of my job i actually have taken quite a few of them when i needed to tackle projects with an unfamiliar scope for example I've taken several "economics" classes when i had to do a project regarding stock and high frequency trading. I'm an information security consultant, and although i am quite familiar with traditional finance systems used for banking, i didn't have enough knowledge of how stock trading and HFT works to be able to truly identify critical issue with such systems (mainly in regards to discovering logic flaws, race conditions and similar issues). So I've found 3 courses i thought would give me enough information and invested the time needed in them. I did "drop" 2 of them but just because they went too deep into economical theories which wasn't what i needed. But i did complete one of them until the end and learned quite a bit from it about how modern day commodity trading works. But I've also treated the "MOOC" as i would any other course I've started at 9 am, finished at 5-6pm and actually structured it like if i were at school or at working (which technically I was). People who just consume online courses when they get bored over the weekends or when they have their 2am "life changing resolutions" will never be able to get anything out of them even with all the guidance in the world. A coach or an adviser will not make any one capable of learning on a bus or at 11pm after a full work day, a gym and a bar visit. There is a reason why night school has higher drop rates than normal school and it's because it's harder. People need energy and the ability to focus on education otherwise it's just a waste of time. And if you sitting in a class from 6-9 is borderline possible for education than what good will it be when you consume it on a tablet while trying not to make eye contact on the train?
ansible 12y ago
MOOCs need more emotional grounding to help decrease the atrocious drop rate. I see many people express concern about the drop rate of MOOCs, but I haven't seen any good arguments as to why it is a problem. I've signed up for several courses, and not finished one of them! So what? I didn't cost me anything, and I didn't hurt anyone by taking up a spot in the class that would instead have gone to a more deserving student. In a couple cases, it is simply that I've got a more than full-time job, and I just don't always have the time and energy to work on a class too. If I'd been paying money for it, I probably would have taken it more seriously, but oh well. I still learned something from most of them, and it was in general worth my time to at least listen to the lectures and look at the homework assignments. I'm still working through one of them... slowly, interleaving it with all the other things occupying my free time.

nkurz 12y ago

The argument seems to be that MOOCs are the online equivalent of lectures. Therefore, since lectures do not seem to hold much financial value to customers, MOOCs will not either, since they consist mostly of online lectures. I think you misunderstand the author's argument. Daniel is actually a professor at something very close to the well-rounded online university you describe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Télé-université http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Télé-université I think he's arguing that by keeping the content closed to all but registered users, the MOOC's would seem to be saying that they believe the lectures are the crown jewels that need to be protected from onlookers. He believes this is silly, and instead (apart from moments of cynicism when he worries that universities merely sell credentials) believes that the value distance learning can offer --- and charge for --- is the same "full package" that you describe. He's claiming that if the people running the MOOC's properly understood this, rather than restricting access to the content of their courses, they'd be making better use of their online content (the part that is very difficult to charge for) to recruit new students. I suspect that he's also motivated by the side benefit that this would provide free educational tools to those unable to 'attend' without doing any harm to the MOOC.