The Online Education Revolution Drifts Off Course

http://www.npr.org/2013/12/31/258420151/the-online-education-revolution-drifts-off-course

by thejteam • 13 years ago

51 45 13 years ago

I sure wish everyone would stop claiming (or at least strongly implying) that "MOOC" and "online education" are synonymous. They aren't.

meej• 13 years ago

Hear, hear! I got my graduate degree in an online program that was a dozen years old with a starting cohort of 120 people, synchronous lectures, and campus visits once a semester. it was online but it was not a MOOC.

ht_th• 13 years ago

Yes, MOOCs solve an educational infrastructural problem at best: getting "education" to more people. The problem, however, is that education is a societal problem/solution that has almost nothing to do with providing the best learning experience for some particular individual. The idea that one educational sequence is effective for thousands or even millions of people to best learn a topic sounds absurd to me. That does not mean that MOOCs cannot be great resources to support the learning of a topic, but the same goes for resources like text books, wikipedia, educational software, and so on.

brianstorms• 13 years ago

Also, there is no "revolution" here. That's just hype, both from the media and the companies.

MOOCs would have existed decades ago, but the cost of distribution of the content was high. With the arrival of YouTube and cheap content delivery networks including Amazon's, MOOCs suddenly eliminated the distribution problem.

But it turns out that wasn't enough. When 90% of your "students" fail to complete the courses, you have an epic failure on your hands. MOOCs are not working.

narrator• 13 years ago

The thing about MOOCs is that a lot of the classes are hard, really hard. This is not remedial algebra so lots of people are not going to be able to learn the material and that's fine. Why is it a failure if 90% of the students fail to complete the course? Likely 100x more students are taking and passing the class then would have otherwise done so at a traditional institution.

For example, with regards to the MITX 6002x course:

"MIT reports that 155,000 people registered for MITx 6.002x and of those, approximately 23,000 tried the first problem set, 9,000 passed the midterm, and 7,157 passed the course as a whole. According to MITx: "… if the number is looked at in absolute terms, it had as many students as might take the course in 40 years at MIT.”"

http://www.nebhe.org/thejournal/disruptive-innovation-changi...

MisterBastahrd• 13 years ago

I don't think any of them are particularly hard. Most of the problem with MOOCs is that the courses just aren't engaging without classroom participation by instructors, and most of them have no penalty for failing to complete the classes. Hell, I'm pretty sure I signed up for that MIT course. Then real life got in the way, and I was spending about 60-80 hours a week trying to get a project out the door.

I think the best solution is to have students learn at their own pace using MOOCs and supplement that with teachers in classrooms. I remember that I was way behind in classes until I hit 2nd or 3rd grade, and then our teachers allowed us to work through various workbooks at our own pace. Within a couple weeks I not only had caught up to my peers, but I was outstripping them at a very fast clip. I think that a lot of really smart kids probably have similar issues... the pace of lowest common denominator teaching which dominates both public and private classrooms can cause really bright kids to be frustrated and ultimately apathetic.

There is a social aspect to schooling that causes a lot of hangups with both teachers and parents alike. Kids who are smarter than their peers have no recourse other than being pushed up grade levels, which brings about its own set of negative challenges. By creating a system where students can learn though MOOCs and have teachers who can aid them, the 3rd grader who should be learning at an 8th grade level can stay with his age group and get that social education which is ultimately just as important as the mathematical and science education.

zachlatta• 13 years ago

How I see it, even if only a small percentage of students complete a course, that's still a relatively large number. I personally know a few people who have benefited greatly from them. I believe MOOCs are here to stay.

DanAndersen• 13 years ago

From a particular perspective, MOOCs aren't working, but I don't know if "percent completing" is the best metric to use when it comes to MOOCs. I've completed about a dozen MOOCs, but I've started and abandoned a fair number too. I think just having the exposure to a wide variety of areas of knowledge, and being able to easily jump into education with a structured format, but not necessarily feel financially compelled to stick with it, has been helpful to me.

From a "job credentials" / "factory-based education" approach, MOOCs may not fit the bill, but I think they provide something really useful just by making knowledge of different concepts available to more people.

jared314• 13 years ago

I think you have highlighted an important distinction. Online learning opens the door to a large number of students, with an even larger number of reasons for taking/missing the courses. (Subject awareness, knowledge, credentialing, mastery, etc.) With traditional course structures, you could expect students to complete/cheat the course for credit, but now they can learn parts of a subject and change their minds. It has exposed the vast differences between student motivations. (A disinterested student no longer has to cheat their way out of the course.)

Previously, to change your goal in the course was considered a personal fault. But, now the lectures are recorded and the tests mostly graded by computer. The deadlines are almost artificial constraints. (This assumes the goal of the course is to master the material, and not credentialing.)

I have failed to complete numerous Coursera courses and other MOOCs, not out of missing motivation, but out of scheduling, life, and complexity. I normally end up downloading the lectures, after the fact, to gain exposure to the subject matter, because my goal had to change from mastery to just understanding the subject matter. I no longer consider that failure.

yodsanklai• 13 years ago

"Also, there is no "revolution" here"

I tend to agree. Actually, I don't see much improvement over a book. I rather have a well-written book in my hand rather than having to go through so many videos.

For me, the main advantage is easy and free access. Also, they make it easier to pace oneself, which is one of the hard part with self-teaching.

"When 90% of your "students" fail to complete the courses, you have an epic failure on your hands. "

What is the percentage of dedicated students, that have the right background to understand the material, complete the course?

"MOOCs are not working."

If working is defined in term of completion rate, they are not. But it's not the right metric.

saraid216• 13 years ago

> When 90% of your "students" fail to complete the courses, you have an epic failure on your hands.
What is the percentage of dedicated students, that have the right background to understand the material, complete the course?

What we have now is too much marketing. The reason 90% of students fail to complete the course is because 90% of them aren't really students. But the MOOC purveyors insist on calling them that despite the fact that a lot of people enroll in a course they don't have time/ability for. And people do that because there's no reason not to.

sghill• 13 years ago

    When 90% of your "students" fail to complete the courses, you have an epic failure on your hands. MOOCs are not working.

I completed every course I signed up for when I was going to university. Completion percentage was important because I was, and still am, paying to be there. As a result, I enrolled in very little that I was simply curious about. Virtually every class I took was a step toward a degree.

Since graduating, I've enrolled in a handful of MOOCs. I've finished less than half of these courses, but they have satisfied my curiosity and have given me something new and different to learn. I most certainly would not have paid for the experience, but I feel I'm better off because of it. I'd say this is working and far from an epic failure.

kbar13• 13 years ago

In other words, it works as much as you want it to work. Similar to how a "real" college experience works, with the difference being a significant financial investment.

smacktoward• 13 years ago

It starts to look a little different when you see people trumpeting MOOCs as "the future of higher education," though.

The thing about MOOCs is that to attract funding, media attention, and participation from big-name universities and top teaching talent -- all the things you'd desperately want to have if you were the one pitching them, in other words -- they really need MOOCs to work as something bigger than just a sideline for the intellectually curious, because the market for "a sideline for the intellectually curious" isn't big enough to attract any of those things on its own. It's a niche market at best.

Higher education as a sector, on the other hand, is anything but a niche market; so if MOOCs could be positioned as The Future of Higher Education, the thing that is going to replace universities in the 21st century, that would suit their advocates' interests nicely. But the data coming out of the MOOC experiments to date make them look less and less like the sort of thing you'd want to bet your kid's future on exclusively if you had any alternatives at all, which undermines that positioning.

randomdata2• 13 years ago

The MOOCs may have some business challenges with a 90% failure rate, assuming they intend to make money from graduates, but it is no indication of problems with the service from an end-user perspective.

I've signed up for a few courses now with no intent of using them as a school, just as supplemental material to augment my own personal learning venture. I don't really care about the tests or homework prescribed by the service, and I certainly don't care about any kind of certificate of completion.

I don't consider my usage habits a failure though. In each case I came away with what I had hoped to learn when signing up.

DennisP• 13 years ago

I pretty much intentionally "fail" my MOOC courses. I have a full-time job plus a lot of side projects. I spend what time I can on Coursera but I sign up for more courses than I could possibly have time to complete.

But I've still learned a lot, and I've been using some of the stuff I've learned in those side projects.

primitivesuave2• 13 years ago

From the perspective of someone in the education space (the physical kind of education involving classrooms and face-to-face conversations), human contact is essential in education. My favorite classes from college were taught by interesting people whose personality and real-world insight gave me a far greater appreciation of the subject than what I could glean from an online video. However, this face-to-face interaction with an experienced individual is not possible in most parts of the world, which is really where MOOCs make a huge difference.

failrate• 13 years ago

I'm currently enrolled in an online degree program at the University of Illinois, and while the teachers are good and the material is interesting and challenging, the class is fundamentally less engaging. The closest analogue I can think of is the difference between IM and a video chat. Many conventional college students use study groups to boost their success rates. What is preventing an online course from using video chat or something similar to the same end? (mandatory forums do not encourage engagement amongst students).

akg_67• 13 years ago

I agree with lack of interaction with MOOCs. I enrolled in three courses on Coursera and dropped out from two of them.

The only one I completed, the instructor was engaging and interactive in the sense, he didn't show just the slides and read, he interacted with the slide. By the time, he finished the video, the slides were all written over in his handwriting.

The one course I dropped because instructor was reading the slides in the videos. I can read slides faster myself, I don't need to watch a lengthy video and listen instructor read the slides.

The second course dropped because instructor wasn't very good at explaining things. He will just show the slides but then ramble on. Though expert in his field, I got the impression that he wasn't a good teacher. Teaching is an art and not necessarily every expert can teach.

The MOOCs need to be engaging, not just the topic wise but also instructor wise.

Pacabel• 13 years ago

The problem with MOOC forums are that they bring together students with very different expectations and attitudes toward education and learning.

During the courses I took, I noticed certain trends. Students with Indian-looking names were often most concerned about the certificate of achievement given out after the course. In each course I'd see students asking if it were available yet well before the end of the course! I suspect that this may be due to the high importance that Indian society today places on the possession of credentials, even if there's insufficient knowledge and experience to back up those credentials.

Likewise, questions about the marking scheme and grading were often coming from students with Asian-looking names. I suspect that this is due to the high degree of emphasis in many Asian societies that is placed upon obtaining extremely high grades in academic studies, even if these grades don't truly reflect understanding.

And questions asking about exact midterm or exam content tended to come from students with Western European or American names. These societies tend to place a lot of emphasis on getting work done with minimal effort, including getting exam questions in advance to avoid unnecessary, from a grading perspective, studying.

Bring together all of those students, and those types of questions can easily take up 70% or more of the discussion. That doesn't leave much room for other discussion. Even that discussion was usually lacking, due to many students not having a good grasp of the course's language of instruction. Bringing together students with different backgrounds may be a good thing, but too much difference is just as bad as extreme uniformity, if not worse. At least in the case of uniformity there is the similarity that the students have in common.

- Pacabel

randomdata2• 13 years ago

However, everyone learns differently. I have found greater success in learning without that kind of interaction. Such contact may be essential for a subset of students, but certainly not all. I find the potential of MOOCs exciting because it finally moves us away from believing the one-size-fits-all model serves all students equally.

The future of education is probably not MOOCs alone, or brick and mortar schools alone. The future is allowing students to learn however they want to learn without barriers. That will truly be transformative.

agumonkey3• 13 years ago

Same here. In real classes, I get distracted by people's flow. I was utterly shy in college and couldn't interact well with people at all, not the best environment to exchange ideas or even think. [1]

I personally like to learn in isolation, I have a tendency to quickly ~plagiarize ideas of others thinking I understand, so learning alone in my room is better.

Inspiring teachers I've met fits on one hand fingers.

I enrolled on many MOOCs, dropped right away from 50% of them (acute click-itis), got late halfway and dropped 25% (but what I could got was solid improvements), finished the rest with many worthy discoveries and good exercises, surrounded by interesting encounters interactions on IRC.

[1] I'd like to add that an unconfident student will have difficulties with teachers too. Small politics, personal preferences and shallow details will play against you. Think submitting a shitty looking but concise self-critical .pdf summary of your project vs a nicely printed and shiny report but full of fluff.

wavesounds• 13 years ago

If you agree that "time is money" then you can consider a MOOC completion rate equivalent to an SAAS conversion rate, in which case 4% would be pretty good[1].

I find it odd MOOC's are being held to such a high standard, when the status quo alternative is failing so hard [2].

1. https://www.quora.com/Business/What-is-a-typical-conversion-... 2. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/12/30/p...

callmeed• 13 years ago

I started 2 Coursera courses this year and completed neither. I went into them almost like a software "trial". It cost me nothing so I lost nothing. Both courses were interesting but it came down to time and opportunity cost.

ksuvhgwef2• 13 years ago

There is another story here. I was involved with OMI before, during and after the initial offering of the Udacity courses. I saw most of it go down.

First, it is important to understand the OMI is a school politicized through and through. Jerry Brown has deep connections to the school, having financed much of the schools on-goings and involving himself continually in the school's decision making. The school has performed alright but not as well enough, it seems, for Jerry Brown. The governor's displeasure does have some merit considering the copious resources the school possesses in areas like staffing and technology.

It appears now that the governor personally approached Udacity in hopes that they might be the solution to the school's lackluster performance. The folks at Udacity appear to me to have been genuinely naive and unfamiliar with the urban charter school world. They apparently accepted straight out what the school told them about student skill and motivation levels. So I believe they were genuinely confused when algebra repeater students turned out not have the pre-algebra skills they were supposed to possess but instead had skills often not much beyond elementary school level. I also think they were truly stumped by the student data that resulted from the school secretly asking adult student-aids to do the work for them, a commonly practiced form of cheating throughout the country in online credit-recovery courses.

Sometime after the whole Udacity experiment went south, I spoke with one of the faculty members more involved in the courses. This faculty member suggested that the Udacity representatives did realize at some point the reality of the mess into which they had allowed themselves to be led. However, also being aware of the politics of the situation and not wanting to offend the govenor, they permitted themselves to be scapegoated.

In the end, I suspect that Udacity is just happy to get back to it's original noble mission of providing free, high-quality, career-oriented online-education to the world and forget this small ill-fated diversion.

mathattack2• 13 years ago

And it's smart of them to change direction.

ksuvhgwef2• 13 years ago

I just remembered I forgot to describe the student motivation. It was very low. The students in the Udacity course were generally put on computers unsupervised and expected to work independently. The students often interpreted this setup as an open invitation to go to video game websites or watch fight videos on the newly unblocked youtube. When then confronted after sometime with their lack of progress, the students would use the excuse that the course work was too hard, not having tried it in the first place. Much of the staff seemed to be aware of the reality of the student excuses, but backed their excuses anyway.

noelwelsh• 13 years ago

The continual focus on completion rates is rather misguided. Like others here, I have taken many a MOOC, and consider the experience useful and successful. I have also never completed a single MOOC, doing little of the homework in most cases. I have no use for more pieces of papers, and really no time to do homework, but I get what I want, which is an overview of a subject area and some entertainment while doing the chores. Learning about behavioural economics from Dan Ariely's course was one of the most useful things I did in 2013, and I am independently learning more about the field.

Obviously there are issues the MOOC providers need to resolve. It's not clear how they will make money, and if they really want to go the volume model they probably need to lower the level of the courses offered -- more Udemy than Udacity -- or offer some kind of recognised accreditation so that students can justify devoting the time required to really learn material. In the language of startups, with which I'm sure we're all familiar, they haven't found product-market fit. It may be the case that people like me are not considered useful by MOOC providers -- I'm unlikely to ever give them money. That's fair enough and I have no problem with it.

I find articles like the one linked rather annoying. It's clear that MOOCs are a thing, and what we really need is discussion of how they're going to integrate with the educational landscape, not sniping from the sidelines. In this case it's ok, as it's a journalistic organisation reporting on what happened. However I read the same thing from academics, which is a real shame. Many seem to get joy from the failures of MOOCs, no doubt because they see them as a threat to their livelihood. I'd rather see some engagement with the issue.

testrun• 13 years ago

I get the same value out of MOOC providers (more Coursera than Udacity to be honest), and find it fantastic to be able to learn about something without any financial obligation.

Also would like to see how they are going to survive financially, and if the universities will keep supporting them.

octaveguin• 13 years ago

I feel the same way about MOOCs and I suspect most of the audience does.

I'm curious why these organizations are pushing a sort of virtual class model at all. Wouldn't it be more useful to provide lecture series on topics alone? Perhaps add some social interaction but in a way more fitting of the medium.

Right now, I went to investigate your behavioral economics class and found that I wasn't able to view the lectures until some time in the future. Why hobble themselves and their users? Is it about a monetization model they envision in the future?

It's quite frustrating because there is some real value here. I'd love for MOOCs to start making big institutions sweat just a little.

yummyfajitas• 13 years ago

Indeed, the relevant number is not (students who complete) / (students who sign up). A better number to look at is (students who complete) / (cost of class) - i.e., an actual benefit/cost ratio. (It's not the best number, since it ignores the value gained by students who partially complete.)

If I pay $2,000 and have a 4% chance of completion, that sucks. If I pay $0 and have a 4% chance of completion, that's pure win.

mathattack2• 13 years ago

And add the value of some learning along the way for masses of non finishers. One could argue this is still better for non-graduates as it still doesn't leave them in debt.

WasimBhai• 13 years ago

Look at it from this way:

I couldn't expect to have access to courses like Probabilistic Graphical Models and Neural Networks by Hinton at probably any of the universities in my country. By popularizing science, by being able to reach such a massive population, even if it inspires a 1% of those taking the course, it is absolutely better than Hinton or Kohler teaching a course to 50 - 250 students at UoT and Stanford per semester.

This is long term we are talking about. Yes, the whole thing must be sustained by business, but I find a moral objective too here.

girvo2• 13 years ago

Somewhat related: do Silicon Valley startups consider someone with actual completed MOOC courses an asset when looking to hire?

edtechdev• 13 years ago

No: edX tried matching 868 high-performing MOOC students with employers, and none were hired.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/edx-drops-plans-to-co...

girvo2• 13 years ago

Huh, well, there you go. There's your issue for MOOCs then.

agarwlGaurav• 13 years ago

This clearly is a propaganda against MOOC. Sebastian Thrun is talking about improving the course and the journalist is trying to misquote as if he is saying the whole idea of MOOC itself is not working. Also 4% figure without number is as useless as it could be. What is 4% of $1 billion? It is $ 40 million still significant amount. The lobby behind this propaganda needs to identified.

mark_l_watson• 13 years ago

I have completed five Coursera classes, and sampled about six others. I think these classes are valuable for people who are self motivated and don't need formal certification in the form of a degree.

A plus is that several of the teachers were absolutely world class.

The Online Education Revolution Drifts Off Course

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