When I took Intro to Computer Science and Programming on edX from MIT (The original 16 week 6.00x before they broke it up into two courses), they broke up the short videos with “finger exercises” which was like the interrupting questions on Udacity, but there were more of them and they were a lot more comprehensive. It was worth enough of your grade so there was motivation to do them, but not so much that you couldn’t skip them if you felt you already really knew it. That was, to date, the best MOOC I’ve ever taken.
I agree that Coursera can sometimes feel a bit too much like copy/pasting a college class onto the internet, but it really does vary a lot by course. For example, Robert Ghrist’s Single-Variable Calculus on Coursera was amazing. 15 minute animated video lecture followed by 10 problem homework assignment.
As far as the scheduled vs self-paced difference, there are ups and downs to both. I have fallen behind in a class before and then abandoned it because I missed a deadline. But knowing that “now is your chance” to take a course can be more motivating than doing self-paced sometimes. Deadlines can be useful.
I really don’t know what’s best, but I’m a huge fan of the open education movement and I see innovations happening all the time. For example, each course in Coursera’s Data Science track has a “due date” for full credit, then a “hard due date”. Each day between them, your score on that assignment loses 10%. You have a total of 5 late days to apply throughout the course. That’s enough to save you if you fall off the wagon for a bit and knowing that you’re losing a bit each day can motivate you to get it done, while being unable to submit after missing the first “due date” can make you want to quit.
I guess different things work for different people, but for me deadlines are pure evil with no upsides. :(
It would be a bit better if I could make those lessons faster. Then I would just start a course, complete it in three days, and move on to the next course. But I hate the “now wait… now hurry… now wait… now hurry...” approach. I started once course when I had a lot of free time, did the first two lessons and then had to wait for a week. So I started another course meanwhile. Next two weeks, I was busy, so I missed a deadline for one assignment. Now I can’t get 100% completion, for no good reason.
I am considering a decision to simply never do a Coursera lesson on the schedule; only pick those lessons that already ended. Then I know I already missed all deadlines, so they become irrelevant. As a side effect, I will never get that free certificate. Which is perhaps good in some sense, because I will not be distracted by lost purposes.
Somehow the typical school system “learn 1 lesson of this, then 1 lesson of something unrelated, then 1 lesson of the first thing again” doesn’t work for me. When I start doing something, I want to continue doing it, and I hate being interrupted. I prefer long work followed by long breaks, not the constant turning on and off. Even the idea of using pomodoros is completely against my instincts. Curious how frequent this is.
You know, when you put it that way, I think you’re right. I do hate not being able to progress when I still have the energy to do so. I could have just been falling for the availability bias when thinking about times that I have scrambled to get something done before a deadline, thinking that that is the reason that I was able to stay on track.
If you do plan to go the archived courses route, maybe consider using something like Accredible to save and post your work as you go through. The idea behind that site is “Prove that you’ve actually done something”. Might be useful.
When I took Intro to Computer Science and Programming on edX from MIT (The original 16 week 6.00x before they broke it up into two courses), they broke up the short videos with “finger exercises” which was like the interrupting questions on Udacity, but there were more of them and they were a lot more comprehensive. It was worth enough of your grade so there was motivation to do them, but not so much that you couldn’t skip them if you felt you already really knew it. That was, to date, the best MOOC I’ve ever taken.
I agree that Coursera can sometimes feel a bit too much like copy/pasting a college class onto the internet, but it really does vary a lot by course. For example, Robert Ghrist’s Single-Variable Calculus on Coursera was amazing. 15 minute animated video lecture followed by 10 problem homework assignment.
As far as the scheduled vs self-paced difference, there are ups and downs to both. I have fallen behind in a class before and then abandoned it because I missed a deadline. But knowing that “now is your chance” to take a course can be more motivating than doing self-paced sometimes. Deadlines can be useful.
I really don’t know what’s best, but I’m a huge fan of the open education movement and I see innovations happening all the time. For example, each course in Coursera’s Data Science track has a “due date” for full credit, then a “hard due date”. Each day between them, your score on that assignment loses 10%. You have a total of 5 late days to apply throughout the course. That’s enough to save you if you fall off the wagon for a bit and knowing that you’re losing a bit each day can motivate you to get it done, while being unable to submit after missing the first “due date” can make you want to quit.
I guess different things work for different people, but for me deadlines are pure evil with no upsides. :(
It would be a bit better if I could make those lessons faster. Then I would just start a course, complete it in three days, and move on to the next course. But I hate the “now wait… now hurry… now wait… now hurry...” approach. I started once course when I had a lot of free time, did the first two lessons and then had to wait for a week. So I started another course meanwhile. Next two weeks, I was busy, so I missed a deadline for one assignment. Now I can’t get 100% completion, for no good reason.
I am considering a decision to simply never do a Coursera lesson on the schedule; only pick those lessons that already ended. Then I know I already missed all deadlines, so they become irrelevant. As a side effect, I will never get that free certificate. Which is perhaps good in some sense, because I will not be distracted by lost purposes.
Somehow the typical school system “learn 1 lesson of this, then 1 lesson of something unrelated, then 1 lesson of the first thing again” doesn’t work for me. When I start doing something, I want to continue doing it, and I hate being interrupted. I prefer long work followed by long breaks, not the constant turning on and off. Even the idea of using pomodoros is completely against my instincts. Curious how frequent this is.
Hey, everyone! When you study, do you prefer to:
[pollid:727]
When you study multiple things, do you prefer to:
[pollid:728]
You know, when you put it that way, I think you’re right. I do hate not being able to progress when I still have the energy to do so. I could have just been falling for the availability bias when thinking about times that I have scrambled to get something done before a deadline, thinking that that is the reason that I was able to stay on track.
If you do plan to go the archived courses route, maybe consider using something like Accredible to save and post your work as you go through. The idea behind that site is “Prove that you’ve actually done something”. Might be useful.