It is academic advising time here at Hendrix, which has given me some thoughts about a potential role of MOOCs.
It is very common for a student to sign up for a course and discover that the material is really not interesting or compelling. But this realization might not happen until several weeks into the course, well past the deadline to replace it with something else.
Furthermore, courses are something of a scarcity for the student.
At Hendrix, students take four courses per semester, with 32 courses required for graduation. In speaking with some of my advisees over the past two weeks, some of them have expressed that the trade-offs in deciding how to invest their precious course credits in filling out their academic portfolio are really quite stressful.
It could be suggested, then, that a student who is feeling indecisive about what to take could sign up for a couple of MOOCs in the pertinent subjects. The student could then use this experience to inform the registration decision.
Unfortunately, the synchronous model employed by Coursera makes this really difficult to do. You have to get the timing right. Coursera's offerings would really be a lot more useful (both in this regard and in other ways) if they would do what Udacity does and archive the course videos indefinitely.
That's an interesting use-case for MOOCs that I hadn't considered before.
ReplyDeleteIt would be interesting to see whether the students would be happy to only use the MOOC to get a "taste" of the course, before registering for an brick&mortar course, or whether they would want to continue and finish the MOOC, after which point they might feel that their new knowledge should allow them to "pass out" of the brick and mortar course entirely...
One significant challenge I see here is that a lot of times the student decision also depends on the instructor. Of course, an institution could decide to allow faculty to put the first few weeks of lots of their classes out in a MOOC-like format. You could even go so far as to require that students actually complete that segment in a satisfactory way before they are allowed to register for a class. That would allow the limited class time during the semester to skip the basics and go to more interesting material.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like this could be accomplished with OpenCourseWare rather than MOOCs. Putting the course materials online makes the content and workload transparent. Students can choose what suits them.
ReplyDeleteFrankly, I'm pretty sure that the bulk of courses students sign up for are either required or scheduled at a convenient time.
It is funny that the OpenCourseWare suggestion is exactly what Laura Gibbs said on G+. I think that can help students know if they are interested, but I think a MOOC-like format with auto-evaluation could go further to make students prove their interest and allow courses to start off with more interesting material.
ReplyDeleteMark, I like your suggestions. Any instructor who wants to give students a "preview" can just make some sample lectures available. To some degree, I am already doing this. I've been recording MP4s of my Computer Science 1 lectures this semester and posting them on Vimeo for use by my students. But they're globally visible; any interested student could check them out and get a pretty candid view of what my class is like. Not that I've publicized that option as of yet...
ReplyDeleteFor my flipped classroom of CS1 and CS2 I have been posting videos to YouTube. They aren't of my normal lectures though. I am never seen. I have to admit that I have gotten more subscribers, and probably more viewers, but off campus than on campus. I don't know if anyone will use them to get a chance to see the material or not. I still think that the MOOC has an advantage if it can include some type of evaluation instead of just showing videos.
ReplyDelete