

Before MOOCs, ‘Colleges of the Air’ - ilamont
http://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2013/04/23/before-moocs-colleges-of-the-air/?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

======
Gormo
There are other parallels, too. When I was growing up, my dad used to check
out VHS tapes of university lectures in physics, astronomy, etc. from the
local library - they had complete recordings of a wide range of courses
available to the public.

As with a MOOC, the videos were free to check out, although there was no text
or problems provided alongside the lectures; but anyone could still check them
out and watch them, or not, just as anyone can enroll in a MOOC, or not, at no
cost in any case.

Which is why the article's point isn't really valid: all of these - MOOCs,
video lectures in the library, and "University of the Air" alike - can't be
compared to a traditional bricks-and-mortar university. Universities have
entrance requirements and tuition charges; the people who attend courses are
the ones who want to be there enough to pay high fees for the privilege, and
whom the university admissions staff believe have the capacity to succeed in
their studies. Quite a selection bias.

If MOOCs also end up having only 17% completion rates, it won't be all that
surprising, but it won't mean that they're not a successful and valid
innovation.

------
VLM
"And like radio, MOOCs still can’t offer the level of sociability or one-on-
one interactions that brick-and-mortar classes do"

Oh no, not that again. Its the standard extrovert swipe at the introverts. It
all boils down to I don't deserve credit for my in person American Prehistory
to Civil War class because I never asked any stupid questions during the
lectures and afterward I went home to my wife and kid instead of going out
drinking afterwards. Such a tired, meaningless spacefiller of an argument.

~~~
jwoah12
You are constructing a pretty big strawman here. The author is saying that
MOOCs don't offer the level of sociability that brick-and-mortar classes do.
Somehow you morphed that (correct) statement into someone telling you that you
don't deserve credit for not asking questions. The author is merely arguing
that traditional classrooms aren't going away any time soon, since that
socialization and interaction is valuable to many people, even if it isn't
valuable to you.

~~~
Gormo
> The author is saying that MOOCs don't offer the level of sociability that
> brick-and-mortar classes do.

Of course, this remains an invalid claim for entirely different reasons,
unless you interpret it as admitting that the "level" of sociability of MOOCs
is often _higher_ than a bricks-and-mortar class.

I recently completed an online master's program, offered by a traditional
university, but in the MOOC format, with lectures in podcast format, and
collaboration primarily via message boards, chat sessions similar to IRC, and
email. There were conference calls as well, but the bulk of actual academic
collaboration took place via text media. In-person meetings only occurred for
one weekend in each semester.

As I perceived it, the depth and sophistication of interaction and
collaboration among students was significantly higher here than in any bricks-
and-mortar course I've ever taken. I attribute this to the asynchronicity of
communication (it's pretty hard to get a large group of people together at the
same time and all in the mental state conducive to productive discourse) and
to the fact that people just communicate _better_ in writing than in verbal
speech (assuming they can write effectively, at least; if so, it's much easier
to convey complex inter-related ideas in a paragraph or two of text than it is
to attempt to verbalize them in real-time).

Quite like the comparing the experience of having a discussion on HN to
discussing the same topic face-to-face with others, in fact.

OTOH, if "sociability" refers to merely recreational activity like grabbing a
beer after a lecture, then yeah, bricks-and-mortar wins. But what's that got
to do with school? If I want to socialize for the sake of socializing, I can
go out for a beer with my local friends instead of my classmates.

