
What annoys you during online courses - harishmaiyags
I would like to co-relate my experience with others.
below are few of my frustratiions
1. Length of training videos
2. Audio&#x2F;voice overs than text displays
3. No place to practice my learning with others
4. Choosing courses and evaluating quality of course work.
Please do share your side of story.
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mattcdrake
Most online courses I’ve taken (university or MOOC) were not improvements over
simply reading the textbook/source and doing the published exercises. I have
taken a handful of online courses from “real universities” and they have all
been atrociously bad. Some MOOCs I have taken have been much nicer (Ng’s
Machine Learning stands out). Courses on platforms like Udemy seem to almost
uniformly consist of regurgitated documentation. Maybe that’s helpful for
someone (or they wouldn’t be so popular (?)), but I find video to be a slower
and less dense form of info transmission.

The main thing I find annoying is that most of the courses I’ve tried don’t
leverage the interactivity available to them. The exercises don't seem to have
the right level of challenge to enable flow. In college, I took a linear
algebra course with lectures on one day and group work on the other. On the
second day, we’d have a difficult application problem of whatever we learned
earlier in the week. We’d break into groups (small enough that you couldn’t
hide) and work through the hard problem together. Each time, I’d leave the
class feeling like I had truly gained a deep understanding of the subject
matter.

In contrast, most online courses (if they have exercises at all) seem to be of
the form: show pattern, change obvious detail, ask for obvious implementation.
I haven’t found a lot of exercises that actually require a stretched
understanding of the material to get through. Maybe this is optimized to
mitigate huge drop off rates in MOOCs - easy problems keep people around
longer. But, that doesn't really create a valuable learning experience.

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donnanorton
The worst thing that one can experience is having to deal with a course with
no media (videos, graphics, etc.). Plain text only. I had it once and it was
awful.

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harishmaiyags
i see..for me, an animation video would be better than plain text or a live
person speaking.

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sloaken
Rather than what I do not like, how about what I like:

1) Videos that are about 15 minutes.

2) Being able to download the text of the video

3) Being able to download the power points

4) Pertinent exercises - with an optional video to show one solution

5) Good volume control - on first video I set my volume and I do not need to
change it for each video - I know sounds trivial

6) Being able to skip back 15 seconds

7) I really like it when they have a 'Explore more' page with links to learn
more indepth on the topic.

8) If it is a 'Read', then I prefer a PDF that is ideally even number of pages
(to print both sides)

9) If it is a 'Read', then font size 12

10) All material that I might print, be organized with the idea that I would
print it - no DOS windows of all black that will chew up all my ink

11) Nice feature would be a questions section

12) Easy to, at a glance, see where you left off the last time

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gavribirnbaum
it is a digitalized version of a college lecture is a terrible format in the
first place. instead of taking the liberty of the internet and of the online
world, it just brings the old methods that don't even work offline into the
online world.

we need classes that helps us learn through collaboration, memorization, and
practice. and I feel the internet can give us that. but Moocs and online
classes do not.

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Simulacra
The fact that it’s online to begin with.

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harishmaiyags
agree. however, current trend is only increasing towards taking in person
tutoring go online.

