Nice one Jon. 

The article is quite interesting but I think I have some questions around the statement below.

“Mooc students spend the majority of their study time watching videos and reading. To aid understanding they join discussion groups with other students, and they take computer-marked tests that direct them back to material they have not understood. For feedback they exchange assignments with a partner and peer grade them against a set of criteria”

Personally the statement above is like saying students that attend physical lectures spend their time looking at and listening to the lecturer.

The “Key Index” in an online learning is the video you watch and the material you read and likewise in a traditional learning is the “professor your listen to and the materials your read”

Inasmuch as the article may carry information about myths, I think it depends on who you ask about the massive open online course (Moocs)

I would like to see a research on the quality of students produced from such courses to actually appreciate that Moocs does not solve the problem of expensive undergraduate course.

The article claims that without prior qualification, the online course would have no meaning, but I am wondering what level of prior qualification the article may be referring to. Typically, if I have had basic education (foundation) and wanted to pursue an undergraduate course, how meaningless would the courses be if I watched the professor on video explaining the course and if I “watched” the professor in class explaining the course? Again, this depends on a number of variables which can only be answered through research.

Good points Azunna. There are always going to be students that succeed despite what we do to them rather than because of it - this is true of traditional lectures at least as much as it is of MOOCs. Unfortunately the motivation to do so tends to be much stronger in traditional courses because a failed course can mean a failed degree, which is a much bigger investment than a MOOC. The fact that people therefore find alternative ways to learn, and/or take a tactical approach that means the instruments we use to assess the outcomes fail to identify the lack of deep learning, tends to conceal the pedagogical and procedural weaknesses pretty well.

Jon

Love this post. I'm the co-founder of a startup doing a mobile learning app for adults (called Ellumia), and I share your opinions on MOOCs. I also have the same issues with more traditional online learning (aka Moodle etc.), which also mimic offline courses but lack a lot of the context, although usually the instructor is able to be more available. It's these deficiencies that led us to take a stab at making our own platform, based on research on how learning happens, rather than institutional or instructor schedules. I'd love to have your input on what we're doing–would you be at interested?

- Katharine Osborne

Thanks Katharine - I'm always interested in alternative ways of helping people to learn: contact me!

Interesting post. The downside for those of us at Athabasca University seems to be at the bottom: it would appear George Siemens has flown the coop!

- Martin Connors

I totally agree, Richard. I was appalled that this model was even considered for a moment and the fact that it was actually implemented, even if only locally in a pilot that may yet be undone, makes me quite ashamed of my university. We should be better than this. I have seen it justified in terms of equity but, as you rightly point out, the choice of recorded time as a proxy is hugely counter-productive: it disempowers professionals in deeply demotivating ways, rewards mediocrity and punishes competence. The block pay approach may be unfair inasmuch as some courses do demand a lot more of tutors, but there are plenty of other ways to deal with that which don't demean the professional role: a simple weighting based on load would do the trick, for instance. We already do that at a coarse level  - e.g. doctoral students demand more per-student time than undergraduates - so there is no good reason we cannot do it per course. We do need quality, but quantity of time spent is a completely inadequate and counter-productive way to either measure it or reward it. It's a naive cost cutting measure that reduces the value far more than it cuts the cost.

Actually, the entire argument against the block pay model can be summed up in this: it is thought to be too expensive by management.

The basic argument is that they (management) really hates the idea of paying someone for students who might never contact the tutor. They hate it so much they will make up any excuse just to kill the existing model. Instead of seeing it as a "cost of doing business" in the e-learning / self guilded world, they view it as a waste that must be eradicated at any cost.

Funny thing is in a brick and mortar university, a contract instructor is paid to teach a class of X students (I did one for UofC Electrical Eng. in 2000 with 150+ students in the lecture). It does not matter one whit if anyone attends the lecture, or if most of them sleep through the lecture (pre smart phone days...). All that mattered is that I was paid to show up M,W,F from 1-2pm and lecture from the provided slides. If I wanted to bore them to tears, or if I wanted to engage them - it didn't matter. I was paid either way. Sort of / exactly like/ our block model. As far as I know, UofC is still doing this.

Indeed, it does seem that cost-shaving played a role in this, however ineffectively.

I don't think we should slavishly copy brick and mortar institutions that only do things that way because of the laws of physics and a tradition of one-to-many lecturing that have no relevance to us at all. Even in such institutions, it is normal to adjust staff workloads according to numbers of students, if only to allow for differences in marking effort, and many such institutions use far more complex metrics to allocate workload.

If we are seeking equity (as opposed to simple cost-cutting alone) it would make some sense for us to take into account the subject and pedagogy. Some courses in some subjects really do only require tutors to do a bit of mechanical marking and demand almost no other engagement. From a pedagogical perspective I don't like the idea that we have such courses in the first place and will readily argue against them, albeit that I approve of the implied diversity and accept that in a few it makes sense, but I don't see why courses that demand more (intellectually, socially, administratively) of their tutors should not employ a higher pay-scale. That's totally different from pay-per-minute rewards/punishments and it's not about cost, it's about value.

What a fantastic post.

Your point that the connectivist process is "fundamentally at odds with the structured process of learning" seems to be related to an observation that I have had that some aspects of contemporary computing (ubiquitous computing and crowd-based systems) seem to be fundamentally at odds with the structured process of enterprise IT. (Been struggling with this lately)

- Simon Chandler

Hi, Jon!!!! It's Guadalupe from the journal Revista Mexicana de Bachillerato aDistancia in Mexico City (where you're a member of its's editorial committee). I need to contact you. I called, but there is a message machine and I wrote to your email, but there is an automated response. Will you please write to me? Thanks a lot!!!!

- guadalupe vadillo