MOOCs are Massive Open Onliine Courses. Many see them as the grand destiny for higher education, opening access for all at a low price. Some courses are taught simultaneously to thousands of students by star professors.
But here is a shocking statistic, reported by politico.com:
“A dismal 7 percent of MOOC students finish their courses.”
I can imagine huge improvements in online courses. They could take advantage of graphics and intetactive tools. Maybe they are the future. But we aren’t there yet.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
For every individual who said a MOOC was going to transform higher ed, I could easily find you 10 who said it won’t. MOOCs are great for certain “things” and people and not so great for others. Look up Gartner’s Hype Cycle and we can see that with any new technology introduced into education, it peaks with excitement and then tails off….and that is fine. Some people like to hype it up as the next best thing to transform education. It will, just not at the pace or scale that some expect. Take a MOOC. Experience it. Don’t let one class set the tone for thoughts about MOOCs in general. It is true, very few see a MOOC from start to finish. In my experience, it is because the person taking the course already knew the material. So many go in to see what it is like ad because very many of them are not for credit, or are free, they don’t have the urgency to see it to completion. Your last line about online courses is dated. Online courses are already there as are fully online degree programs from well established schools. Again, this is a great option and tool for some, not all. Having choices is a wonderful thing, is it not?
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The courses can be improved, but nothing will undo millions of years of evolution. The emotional aspect of learning is vital–and a live human being is much more capable of bringing life to a subject matter than any online course. We are inherently social creatures, and when we distance the human, passionate essence from teaching and learning we do so at our peril. 21st century learning is code for all sorts of bad ideas…
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“The emotional aspect of learning is vital.” Well said!
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And that is what learning theory says also. We construct t our knowledge through experiences and those experiences involve interacting with people. The people aspect is important because they give us push back to our ideas, forcing us to go deeper and wider. If not, then we may know isolated facts but not connections. There is also the aspect of learning how the people in the area think. As an engineer turned teacher, I can say that there are different ways of thinking in the two disciplines, although many similarities too.
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Passively watching and listening to second-hand information may entertain, but as a learning method it is bound to be ineffective
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I’ve been teaching credit bearing online courses (not MOOCs) at universities since I became disabled several years ago and can’t work at bricks and mortar schools anymore and they are not passive learning environments. Students are required to regularly engage in discussion groups, as well as complete assignments, which are often flexible and based on student interests, as related to course content, and can be submitted in a choice of formats, so they’re not just about writing papers.
One development of note that that I’ve seen over the years is that, because students have uploaded so many course tests to online websites, some colleges have decided to eliminate the tests altogether and replace them with more assignments. The tests came from test banks created by textbook publishers and often contained many errors, so I was glad to see them go. However, this change has meant that students have had to do a lot more work to demonstrate learning. Since the tests had been graded automatically by the online software program, professors also have more work to do in grading all the additional assignments and giving detailed, actionable feedback. We are also now expected to enhance our courses with a lot of bells and whistles that are engaging for students, which are the kinds of tasks that IT used to do (all for no extra pay).
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No offense intended.
Accredited colleges offer public speaking courses, on-line. They offer personal selling courses, on-line. They have nursing programs, conducted almost exclusively, on-line.
The absurdity of course curriculum, citing proficiency in interpersonal communication, as a mandatory achievement for course completion, when there is no class time in which to instruct, model, or assess, makes a mockery out of education.
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Yeah, I know I’m hated here, but many adults have a need for online college courses and I have a need to eat and pay the rent so I can survive, because I don’t get any help from family or government assistance.
I don’t think everything should be taught online and I have serious issues with online nursing programs, but I’ve not taught at a school which has that program. When providing one was considered, I voiced my concerns about it, as did many other professors, and it was never added.
I’m a formally trained educator who spent 30 years in bricks and mortar classrooms with virtually all ages of students. The online environment differs, but I still instruct, model and asses. I’m relieved that I don’t have to use big time publishers’ assessments anymore and can implement my own formative and summative methods, as I used to do and I know many other teachers would like to be able to do again.
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Cosmic, no one here hates you.
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You’re not hated here. I don’t think one person on this forum begrudges your need to earn a living. And online courses have their place. But they shouldn’t be for teenagers (or, heaven forbid, children), except in some unusual circumstances. And for universities, they should be an option, but NOT the only one.
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Thank you, Diane and Threatened Out West. This is assuring because I had thought you were amongst those who felt otherwise, Diane.
I don’t believe K12 students should be taking online courses. They are not for all adults either, and I certainly don’t want bricks and mortar colleges to be replaced with cyberschools.
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I am teaching 3 online course right now for a university and have taught successfully online for over 15 years. My daughter who is in high school is taking a wonderful online course right now. But all of these courses have real live people on the other end giving feedback, being responsive. They are not MOOC’s so I did not even consider this the same thing.
I still have gotten to know most of my students and my students know me. I have received many wonderful notes of how much my online students appreciate my interest in them as a person and caring about their success. I keep in touch with many of them years after the course is over.
My daughter has a great relationship with her online teacher. So I am just like you Cosmic and do not hate anyone. I also do not hate online learning. It works in some cases with some people- usually my student’s rate of success is over 90%- just like my live classes. But that is not because of the online part- that is just the delivery system. I am still a teacher like I am when I am in front of students.
I will offer one caveat. Students who have only had me online usually love my courses, But anyone who has had my classes live, usually misses me in my online courses. The reason seems to be is that online we stick to the curriculum better but do not go on offshoots for those teachable moments as often as we do live. My students seem to really appreciate all those off topic discussions. I still have not figured out how to duplicate that online to the same extent.
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We have been warned for my entire career that teachers would be replaced by radio, tapes, television, video, and computers. I am sure robots will be the next thing replacing us. But according to all social learning theories we need a person other than the student somewhere in the mix. Children’s minds are not empty vessels that teachers fill up, learning is an interactive experience involving relationships. It is difficult to have a relationship with your radio or MOOC instructor. 🙂
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It requires instructors who are readily accessible and responsive. I spend a great deal of my time interacting with students. That’s not possible in MOOCS because of the enormous class sizes. Online learning is not for everyone and I believe that most children really need the physical presence of teachers, so I don’t recommend it for kids.
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Education by software is a big, fat JOKE and makes tons of $$$$$ for the FEW like UGH…Gates, Pearson, and the rest of those jokers, who wouldn’t put their children throught this kind of (fill in the blanks).
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It differs in higher ed and can vary greatly from one school to the next. All of the programs that we use are open source and freely available. No one benefits financially from that except the university, since they don’t have to purchase any software. Test banks usually come with textbooks and instructors get desk copies of those for free from publishers.
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They are nice for retirees who don’t need a degree but want to keep their minds active.
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The link has some interesting Weingarten news…
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Larry Cuban writes a great piece about will the future teaching and learning become digitized. Worth your reading: https://larrycuban.wordpress.com/2015/01/21/will-teaching-and-learning-become-automated-part-3/
Cyber education has not faired well in PA.
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I’m obligated to post this whenever I read the term “MOOC.”
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MOOCS
The Pew research ON the thesis to o fHarvard The 8 Principles of Learning, was definitive about what the urging intelligence of the man brain MUST HAVE for LEARNING to occur.
Not surprisingly this was third level research ( huge studies where the results are verified across all participating districts… it has to work everywhere) on EFFORT -BASED LEARNING…
Click to access polv3_3.pdf
DOING WORK was enabled and supported by these 8 principles. Work means practice, and effort, soit is not surprising that the first 2 principles for teaches, were 1- clear expectations and 2- rewards for performance.
Practice, which requires work, being the core essential in the acquisition of any skill, from playing a fiddle, hitting a ball with a bat or racquet, or learning critical analysis (comparing and contrasting. predicting etc).
When I was the cohort for NYC middle schools, in this research, I attended seminars for 2 years, which identified for teachers WHAT LEARNING LOOKS LIKE, and how to ENABLE & FACILITATE LEARNING.
Thus, when I her nonsense I recognize it for what it is… just another magic elixir, no evidence required – put out by the billionaires and corporate entities (i.e Snake-oil salesmen) to keep the public confused and bamboozled so they will buy anything they sell.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/BAMBOOZLE-THEM-where-tea-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-110524-511.html
.
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Sorry about the typos — First line should read:
The Pew research ON the thesis out of Harvard , called The 8 Principles of Learning, was definitive about what the emerging intelligence of the human brain MUST HAVE in order for LEARNING to occur.
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hee hee.
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Another way the tech companies are brainstorming new ways to make profits. Professors and teachers need to be on guard. Begin early because they will likely start lobbying legislators to allow more of these classes into public colleges.
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LOL!!!! LOL!!!
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A university in my state has ONLY online classes for the basic college math class that a lot of entry students need to take. The failure rate is astounding, and many students have to take the class two, three, even four times to pass. Great for the university–they make tons of money on a non-credit class. But horrible for the students.
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That’s what I’m afraid of- that it will end up as cut-rate classes for the middle and lower.
We have a community school committee (not the school board- they’re elected and a different entity) and we had a presentation by an ed-tech promoter. I was prepared because I thought it would be wildly popular, probably because I read so much of what I consider national promotion or marketing, but it really wasn’t popular locally.
There were lots and lots of doubts and good questions. I was proud of my fellow members 🙂
The presenter opened with slides of High Tech High School so I was immediately wary.
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I have had first-hand experiences with students who have taken online classes in high school and in college…and it was not worth the $$$$$ and the courses were awful. For one course, the student had to take the midterm and final a THE TESTING CENTER, only there were NO TESTING CENTERS in this state, even though this information was online. I called the library, I called various campuses, and even tried to get in touch with the supposed instructor. WHAT a JOKE that was. NO ONE was there at all. HONEST, can’t make this stuff up. I was appalled.
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One of his pitches was “they could go to the museum” (a “cybervisit”) and we have a museum an hour away and they used to actually go there in school, back when we had field trips, so that went over like a lead balloon 🙂
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MONEY MAKER … not an education. GROSS.
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The amount of self-discipline required for on-line learning makes this idea unworkable for most humans; especially adolescents. Our district is using Apex Learning self-directed review sessions for students re-taking Regents exams. The level of concentration and persistence required for successful use seems to be beyond most struggling students.
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Recognizing the problem of on-line class completion, many colleges added a statement for students, that asked them to use the criteria of maturity, as a self-identified prerequisite for enrolling.
No, I’m not kidding.
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Back to BOOCS says I…
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College managers like MOOCS for the same reason profit-making charters like Teach for America and the like–they can replace expensive–and even tenured!–faculty. Some on-line work in college courses can be helpful, and teachers are doing useful experiments with on-line delivery for SOME courses–especially for students who cannot attend the usual college course. But it’s the “massive” part of the MOOCs and the form–remote, huge lectures–that are problematic. Yes, there are excellent lecturers whom we’d all like to listen to. But I’ve seen NO information about what students actually learn from MOOCS, even with the best of all possible lecturers, that’s really different from and greater than what they might learn from reasonably good teachers in the usual college classroom. In any case, for most courses lecturing simply isn’t the best approach to education.
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Exactly. It’s the “m”in MOOC which makes the problem. I teach writing, which lends itself quite well to online instruction; i taught online for years, all students who were local and who would have attended campus classes if they could have – and it was fine. Plenty of interaction, personal contact, direct formative assessment and so on….. But a “massive” online course falls into the familiar fallacy: it confuses teaching and publishing – as if the only form of instruction was lecture, and the only role of the lecturer was to “deliver” otherwise unobtainable “information.”
People want company when they learn. It’s why going to the movies is a social activity, even though you are just sitting in the dark. It’s why we have colleges – the original idea of a college was to bring scholars together so they could learn together. That is NOT going away.
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The devaluing, of face-to-face teaching, in universities, is the duplicitous ploy of education reform.
Relegating education to on-line delivery, is the surest way to create conditions favorable to oligarchy. As plutocrats are taking K-12, by force, they are incentivizing universities to deliver the oligarch message. (UnKochmyCampus.org) Courageous college faculty, have traditionally, and currently are, using the richness of interpersonal communication and the collective strength
of assemblies of people, to profoundly change students, for the better. The nation’s last bastion, strong enough to create a force for the good of American communities, is on college campuses. Universities strengthen students, giving them the confidence to demand what’s their due, in terms of political voice and economic and leadership opportunities.
Narrowly focused, career-related curriculum and, off-campus students, tethered to computers, deny the setting, for the formation of a united voice, for those who produce GDP and build the nation. The divine right of kings found their voice at the intersection of Wall and K Streets.
World War II leveled U.S. class structure. The soldiers, on return, understood, their aspiration to lead and their collective action through voting, would guarantee their economic opportunity. Their leaders, having endured and witnessed sacrifice, were vigilant in the eternal fight about which Lincoln warned- against those you seek “to eat the bread, for which others toil”. We can’t and wouldn’t want to wait for war conditions to occur again. I’d prefer to place my faith in U.S. college students, the revitalization of unions, and warriors like Diane Ravitch.
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I have taken mainly online courses, including MOOC’s. Good online courses with a reasonably small number of participants can be almost as valuable as in-person courses. They are especially useful for short-term courses for people who want to learn something very specific, usually related to something in their profession. Students who take theses types of classes are very motivated.
However, the good online courses are not like MOOCs. MOOCs are good for people who have a passing interest in something or are following the topic as an avocation. They are too large and there is too much noise for them to be intense learning environments for most learners. And, although I always appreciate feedback from my peers, the fact that you do not get feedback from the instructor in MOOCs is a big negative to me.
Good online courses require similar amounts of labor and cost to the sponsoring university as in-person courses. So they are not really a money saver. Their goal is (or should be) more to allow people who live far from the university or are homebound or who have odd schedules to be able to take part.
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