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Five myths about Moocs | Opinion | Times Higher Education
Diana Laurillard chipping in with a perceptive set of observations, most interestingly describing education as a personal client industry, in which tutor/student ratios are remarkably consistent at around 1:25, so it is no great surprise that it doesn't scale up. Seems to me that she is quite rightly attacking a particular breed of EdX, Coursera, etc xMOOC but it doesn't have to be this way, and she carefully avoids discussing *why* that ratio is really needed - her own writings and her variant on conversation theory suggest there might be alternative ways of looking at this.
Her critique that xMOOCs appear to succeed only for those that already know how to be self-guided learners is an old chestnut that hits home. She is right in saying that MOOCs (xMOOCs) are pretty poor educational vehicles if the only people who benefit are those that can already drive, and it supports her point about the need for actual teachers for most people *if* we continue to teach in a skeuomorphic manner, copying the form of traditional courses without thinking why we do what we do and how courses actually work.
For me this explains clearly once again that the way MOOCs are being implemented is wrong and that we have to get away from the 'course' part of the acronym, and start thinking about what learners really need, rather than what universities want to give them.
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Jon Dron
Jon Dron
Comments
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