It would be quite difficult for a researcher to conclude ‘MOOC’s are/are not effective’ due to the flexibility of the grading mechanisms.
In terms of ‘passing’ a MOOC , some courses offer easy multiple choice quiz’s where you can submit several times, while others require peer reviewed essays or a calculation to 4 decimal places.
To test the effectiveness of a course, you’d need to not only look at the course content / quizzes / exams, but also the student reviews to get an idea on how accurate/simplified the content testing actually is.
As a single data point, my personal experience is that MOOC’s are massively more effective for my learning style than any traditional course I have taken.
What’s your retention like, 1, 6, 12 months after?
The reason I ask is that I’ve noticed that the things I’ve “learned” on khanacademy and MOOCS stick far more poorly in my brain than traditional methods do, despite doing the provided exercises. Is this is quirk of my brain, or is it a problem with the exercises/instruction given?
A big problem I’ve found with video lectures is the difficulty of looking things up afterwards. Text is much easier to refer back to, and it’s after-the-fact repetition that helps things stick with me (and, by my understanding, with most people). I do find a lot of video lectures much “clickier” than text, though. Explaining something five ways is stylistically and editorially frowned upon in text, but is much more common in lecture format, so it increases the odds of having the subject explained in a way that suits me.
(I also think the on-demand style of online video lectures makes it harder to remember them than if they were in a spaced, episodic format. By way of comparison, if I watch a box-set TV series in one marathon sitting, all the episodes will blur, and that will make it harder to remember exact sequences of events, or what occurred in proximity to what; if all the episodes are separated, they’ll feel more self-contained, and I’ll also have other surrounding events in my life to pin the memories on.)
My MOOC successes have been ones that introduced me to subjects for which I subsequently got hold of several books, or ones that supplemented parallel study in a similar area.
My MOOC successes have been ones that introduced me to subjects for which I subsequently got hold of several books, or ones that supplemented parallel study in a similar area.
Yep, this is what I end up doing. Works pretty well for me.
On average, I would say my retention is slightly less than traditional methods and this is probably due to be the amount of time spent doing exercises. MOOC’s are generally completed faster, and the number of required exercises/quizzes you do is overall less than a traditional course.
Even with traditional courses, if I want to be able to do the stuff I’ve learned after it is over (and not just get the piece of paper), I work out a way to apply the learning in real life, such as a small programming project, or spend 10 minutes a day doing practicing maths. It is only after doing that that I considered I have nailed a topic.
It would be quite difficult for a researcher to conclude ‘MOOC’s are/are not effective’ due to the flexibility of the grading mechanisms. In terms of ‘passing’ a MOOC , some courses offer easy multiple choice quiz’s where you can submit several times, while others require peer reviewed essays or a calculation to 4 decimal places.
To test the effectiveness of a course, you’d need to not only look at the course content / quizzes / exams, but also the student reviews to get an idea on how accurate/simplified the content testing actually is.
As a single data point, my personal experience is that MOOC’s are massively more effective for my learning style than any traditional course I have taken.
What’s your retention like, 1, 6, 12 months after?
The reason I ask is that I’ve noticed that the things I’ve “learned” on khanacademy and MOOCS stick far more poorly in my brain than traditional methods do, despite doing the provided exercises. Is this is quirk of my brain, or is it a problem with the exercises/instruction given?
What do you class as “traditional methods”?
A big problem I’ve found with video lectures is the difficulty of looking things up afterwards. Text is much easier to refer back to, and it’s after-the-fact repetition that helps things stick with me (and, by my understanding, with most people). I do find a lot of video lectures much “clickier” than text, though. Explaining something five ways is stylistically and editorially frowned upon in text, but is much more common in lecture format, so it increases the odds of having the subject explained in a way that suits me.
(I also think the on-demand style of online video lectures makes it harder to remember them than if they were in a spaced, episodic format. By way of comparison, if I watch a box-set TV series in one marathon sitting, all the episodes will blur, and that will make it harder to remember exact sequences of events, or what occurred in proximity to what; if all the episodes are separated, they’ll feel more self-contained, and I’ll also have other surrounding events in my life to pin the memories on.)
My MOOC successes have been ones that introduced me to subjects for which I subsequently got hold of several books, or ones that supplemented parallel study in a similar area.
In the flesh teachers.
Yep, this is what I end up doing. Works pretty well for me.
On average, I would say my retention is slightly less than traditional methods and this is probably due to be the amount of time spent doing exercises. MOOC’s are generally completed faster, and the number of required exercises/quizzes you do is overall less than a traditional course.
Even with traditional courses, if I want to be able to do the stuff I’ve learned after it is over (and not just get the piece of paper), I work out a way to apply the learning in real life, such as a small programming project, or spend 10 minutes a day doing practicing maths. It is only after doing that that I considered I have nailed a topic.