
Why My MOOC Is Not Built on Video - colinprince
https://www.class-central.com/report/why-my-mooc-is-not-built-on-video/
======
douche
There are a lot of bloggers (John Sonmez is the most notable), who I have
stopped following because they have shifted to video. I really don't have the
time to watch a video, when I can read the same content in text form 2-3x
faster, and do a Ctrl-F to find any terms of interest later when I want to
review the content. It's a singularly inappropriate form of communication for
technical subjects.

I imagine it has to hurt their Google rankings as well, especially when they
don't include a transcript.

~~~
douche
I'm a little surprised at the strong support this comment has driven. Haha, I
usually use this account for opinions that I would think controversial.

~~~
bramgg
I see this opinion voted to the top of Hacker News all the time. People seem
to forget that watching something in video format is just so damn convenient,
and requires little effort.

~~~
alashley
Watching a video does require little effort, but learning -- and subsequently
retaining anything is where the real effort is required with technical
subjects.

~~~
reacweb
When you watch a video, you lose the freedom of the rate. People do not like
to lose freedom.

~~~
metasean
This isn't completely true.

I frequently will download all the videos for an online course. Subsequently,
when I watch them in VLC [1], I'll bump the playback to 1.25x - 1.75x.

Fwiw: for me, playback speed strongly correlates to how technical the topic
is, less technical videos tends toward the 1.75x; while highly technical tends
toward the 1.25x.

I'm also a big proponent of subtitles and transcripts.

[1]: [http://www.videolan.org/vlc/](http://www.videolan.org/vlc/)

~~~
jsuar
I'm glad you brought this up. This has tremendously improved my experience
with video lectures. For online classes, I do the same as you mentioned
utilizing VLCs playback feature. Youtube's addition of playback speed has also
been a huge improvement in consuming more technical content.

------
karmacondon
Simply: The average person can read at ~300 words per minute, and listen at
~150 words per minute.

I'm not a big fan of video as a tool for conveying information in general. Not
only can I read faster than I can listen, but I can skim and skip around as
well. There are situations where video is the best way to impart certain
information, but those seem to be the rare cases. I hate it when websites make
me sit through a 3 minute video in order to get an answer to one simple
question, or to understand "What does this thing do?"

I've never taken a MOOC course because I can't imagine having the time to
watch X hours of someone talking at a camera. If this video-less trend catches
on I might actually be able to benefit from online education.

~~~
freehunter
I recently picked up a video series on Udemy with a 90% off coupon I found,
and this is my exact problem. If I'm following along, I have to pause and
rewind the video so often, and other times I'm flipping through reddit because
he's dragging on about something or having technical difficulties while
recording. Every time I need to rewind the video, it buffers for several
seconds, or sometimes freezes and needs me to reload the tab. Never mind that
I can't go back to a lesson and Ctrl+F to find something that was referenced
later on.

It seems like _everything_ I search for these days, I find as a YouTube video.
Why? I was trying to take the center console out of my truck and needed to
find out what size the bolts were on the back of the driver's seat. Only
results were YouTube videos. So I'm sitting in my garage streaming a five
minute YouTube over my limited LTE just so I can find out it's a 17mm wrench.
Most of that five minutes is the guy telling me who he is, how to subscribe,
what website he's with, and why I need to watch the video that I'm already
watching. Google can tell me the up-to-the-minute March Madness scores but the
only way to find out what size wrench is needed for a Chevy Silverado, one of
the most common trucks in the US, is a YouTube video from a guy with an accent
so thick I can't understand him.

Useless. Some days I feel the world would be better off without YouTube. Until
the day when we can index and search video and voice the way we can text,
YouTube is nothing but entertainment to me. Stop making "educational" videos,
I don't want to watch them.

~~~
jghn
100% agree with this. What makes me really scratch my head is that I talk to
people regularly who _prefer_ this! If I have to watch a video to answer my
question, I'll just figure it out some other way.

~~~
cpks
It depends on context.

First-order:

* At a computer ==> Text * Commuting ==> Audio/video

Second-order depends on things like type of content, cognitive load, etc.

~~~
jghn
Agreed that commuting (for some forms of commuting) text is suboptimal. I ride
on a subway so it doesn't really matter to me but I can't read blogs while
driving for instance.

------
penprogg
I agree with the author's sentiment 100%.

As others have stated, the reason that video is worse than text for learning
is because

A. The rate at which you can read is faster than you can listen

B. Video technology is often a hassle when you need to skip around.

C. It's cheaper to write and revise text than video.

D. Videos consume large amounts of data.

But I'm going to add another point.

E. Lecturers most often don't know what I as a student am struggling with.
They may focus on things I understand easily and spend a majority of time
discussing things I already know. However, if I decide to skip a portion of a
video I could potentially miss a really important detail necessary for
understanding the subject matter.

With a book I can skim. Important information is often marked in a certain way
to make it stand out from other data. It's also organized in sections and
chapters so I can easily skip around. With videos this isn't possible.

Also, what happens when all of this information is outdated? Now you have a
bunch of videos with outdated and potentially false information out there and
nobody will know.

My ideal alternative would be to remove lectures entirely and to have
interactive labs where teachers and TAs help students complete assignments
based on assigned readings. The instructor for the course would be responsible
for overseeing the teaching assistants and preparing the course outline. The
TAs would help guide the students in completing the assignments or mini
projects. Then a couple of time a semester there would be larger projects that
tie together what the students have learned.

~~~
davidbanham
> My ideal alternative would be to remove lectures entirely and to have
> interactive labs where teachers and TAs help students complete assignments
> based on assigned readings. The instructor for the course would be
> responsible for overseeing the teaching assistants and preparing the course
> outline. The TAs would help guide the students in completing the assignments
> or mini projects. Then a couple of time a semester there would be larger
> projects that tie together what the students have learned.

_yes_.

This seems so obvious to me. I am completely mystified as to why all
universities seem to be ignoring it. I worry that it's just because
videotaping lectures and putting them online is so much easier than actually
re-evaluating the pedagogy.

~~~
neaanopri
I'm in a class that's doing it right now. There are problems.

Often nobody knows what's going on. You can argue that confusion is good, but
it's not fun and it feels wrong. You can argue that class should be
challenging and active, but this method led to a minor student revolt.

Discrimination and prejudice happen. Women are underrepresented (with respect
to the ratio in the class) in the conversations that happen.

We haven't figured out the right incentive structure to make people actually
do the readings yet. Sometimes people don't do them.

Personally, I love this new method. It has problems on the scale of a 60ish
person class in a technical subject (nonlinear dynamics). When we're working
in small groups, that helps, but whenever we try to do something as a class it
devolves into an impromptu lecture (most of the time by a student).

If we want to learn this way we need to know how to scale it. It seems
drastically more effective, and I think that college would be so much better
if this method was normal.

~~~
xerophyte12932
One of my teachers in College managed to pull it off splendidly. The course
was Algorithms. I suspect the normal format for an Algorithms course is that
the teacher would write an algorithm and explain how it works and its
merits/demerits etc... in short, a lecture.

What our teacher did was: 1) Write a small piece of pseudocode on board and
called it a "unit" 2) Present a problem to the class. 3) Ask students to come
up with solutions that used the unit (or modified it a bit. 4) Allow Students
to present their solutions to the rest of the class. 5) Allow the class as a
whole to debate on competing algorithms. 6) (If applicable) Reveal the name of
the algorithm the class has just derived. 7) Repeat

The teacher rarely ever lectured. He just presented problems and let the class
figure a way out. Occasionally he would nudge us in a direction we weren't
considering, but mostly he was there just to ensure things run smoothly and
that's all.

On the whole, it worked out great. Before the class I knew most people had
trouble designing algorithms. At the end, even the weaker students had a
pretty good grasp on the subject because the format itself encouraged everyone
to contribute and thus learn.

------
brudgers
I've been watching the SICP videos this weekend with the goal of making it all
the way through this time (I tried watching them about a year and a half ago
after taking my first programming MOOC).

What struck me this time was how much the emphasis is on practical software
engineering rather than Lisp. That's what Ableson is so intensely passionate
about in the video, not the theory. And so picking up the book and looking at
the parallel text, I reread it in a whole new light. It was like rereading
Eco's _Name of the Rose_ after 25 years and not as the piece of pop fiction I
thought it was the first time.

Which brings me to my point that video is just another communication channel.
It conveys particular information efficiently and other information less
efficiently. Text is no different. Without the video I would never have picked
up that _SICP_ and _Code Complete_ have many similarities in subject matter
and one just starts with a clean slate and the other in the messy middle.

Video does not need to be fancy to be effective. See Jeffery Ullman's _Finite
Automata_ on Coursera. It's PowerPoint and a small talking head and a red pen:
And it's better than reading the book he wrote with Who because though dense,
it's an order of magnitude less dense than the text.

On the other hand, University of Phoenix operated its online courses with NNTP
and was reasonably interactive though asynchronous. It's a matter of
curriculum development I suppose. Dan Grossman at University of Washington
compares developing a MOOC to writing a textbook and that probably captures
the domain of possibilities.

------
the_af
I fully agree videos shouldn't be the main way of giving lectures in MOOCs. Or
more accurately: I don't find videos particularly useful to me.

My experience is based on 3 programming courses from Coursera: _Functional
Programming Principles in Scala_ , _Reactive Programming_ , and _Programming
Languages_. In all three cases, the videos did little to improve my
understanding of the material, and I preferred the slides. Unfortunately,
because the videos existed, the slides were (in general) less complete; I'd
rather the videos did _not_ exist and the written material was more complete
instead.

Videos frustrate me because the lecturer goes too slowly or chooses to focus
on the parts I find less interesting. And because it's pre-recorded, I cannot
ask him/her questions. Yes, I can skip or fast-forward the video (in one
course, I was so used to playing every lecture at max speed, I was surprised
to find the lecturer's voice at normal speed sounded completely different :P
), but I find it so frustrating I'd rather be reading detailed text instead.

The embedded interactive quizzes are fun and motivating, but I wonder if the
videos are needed at all.

~~~
brudgers
I've taken two of those courses. I often typed the example code from the
lectures in or took notes as I would in a brick and mortar class. This meant
slowing the lectures down or pausing them or rewinding them. That's great for
me...but I'm on Norvig's ten year plan.

~~~
the_af
Wouldn't reading the source material (and copying from there) be even better
for Norvig's ten year plan? Note that the pace of brick and mortar classes
drove me mad back in my student days :)

Also, the deadlines from Coursera and most MOOCs conspire against watching
videos at normal speed. Most of us have day jobs and the only time we can read
the lectures and do the exercises is a few hours a day, late at night. In that
case, speed-watching and focusing only on the most interesting parts are the
_only_ options, especially if you want to get full credits for the course. (Of
course, you can take the more relaxed approach of simply not caring about the
credits, and getting things done at whatever pace you find comfortable, and
that's completely valid!)

~~~
brudgers
The deadlines in a MOOC are no different than any other deadline. Cut scope,
cut quality, or deathmarch are the options for meeting them. Death march is
the only option for full credit. Cutting quality will let a person play the
"points game" for a certificate. Cutting scope means learning whatever you
learn in the frame of the class.

One of Grossman's observations is that the length of the class correlates with
completion rate. The longer the class, the more likely something will come up
and throw everything off schedule. Knowing that fact means the longer the
course, the more likely cutting quality will be necessary to earn a
certificate.

The underlying premise for skipping around to just the interesting parts is
that the entirety of the subject does not interest the student. There's
nothing wrong with that. But that's not really a good target audience for the
design of a class. That student is already committed to partial disengagement.

My take on programming has become that watching a programming video is like
watching Jimi Hendrix play the guitar. A beginner learns almost nothing
applicable because they don't have the mechanical technique as a basis for
informing their seeing. A virtuoso will see new techniques and ways they could
do them better.

Watching Grossman type text into a box or Ullman do a proof is less
informative until I had the mechanical experience of following along. We all
tune out video because it is so ubiquitous. The courses on Coursera are real
courses. The results of not taking notes during lectures are pretty much the
same as not taking notes during a brick and mortar lecture: some geniuses will
ace the test anyway and everyone else will do average, mediocre or poorly
according to their nature.

~~~
the_af
Disclaimer: the following comes with a big "in my opinion" preceding it.

Um, I think no-one finds every part of any given subject interesting to the
same degree. That's human nature. But also, maybe you already understand some
parts and want to skip ahead to the more difficult parts. Sadly, in the
excessively constrained format of video, sometimes the teacher will choose to
focus on the topics you already understand, and neglects others. Such are the
limitations of video format -- and indeed, of brick and mortar classes! Only
the full, unabridged text gives you a (relatively) unconstrained explanation
of all relevant topics. Of course, it also comes with some disadvantages: it
can overwhelm the student, or present topics in the wrong order, or -- even --
focus on the "wrong" things, because after all written notes are also space-
constrained. But I find it a way less constrained format anyway.

I find taking notes to be an uninteresting artifact of "live" classes. What
truly matters is that you do the exercises and understand them.

If I gave the impression that I favored the "lazy" approach, I apologize. To
be honest, I think watching the videos is both the lazy approach (only reading
the notes seems like the serious approach to me) AND a time-waster. You are
both more efficient AND gain a better understanding of the source material if
you read the written notes/book and also do the exercises.

~~~
brudgers
I took Odersky's class because I wanted to learn Scala and functional
programming from Odersky. I trusted his judgement as to what was important and
what wasn't. I could find programming exercises and Scala tutorials using
Google. There are even free Scala ebooks and I own a hard copy of _SICP_. What
I can't get on my own is Odersky.

BTW, I found the format of the exercises for that class tedious and overly
dependent on SBT. I walked away knowing some Scala and more functional
programming but configuring the IDE to start a new very simple Scala project
wasn't covered, unfortunately.

I will also add that Odersky's videos were a bit confusing because they were
disconnected from the bricks and mortar class where they are also used,
apparently. Curtailing the subject matter for the MOOC may make sense, but the
those videos show how tempting it is to avoid the effort that editing video
entails.

I think Grossman's class was much better designed. The slide based format
without human body parts allows more flexibility with regard to editing.
Taking body parts off the screen allows more flexible combination.

~~~
the_af
I agree Grossman's class was much better designed. I think he is a great
teacher. But in my opinion it was mostly because the course's notes were very
comprehensive in the case of _Programming Languages_ and somewhat poor in
Odersky's courses (again: no disrespect meant for Odersky; just my opinion on
the design of these online courses). With Grossman's course you can skip the
videos entirely and miss nothing, whereas you cannot do that with Odersky's.

In both cases, I found the exercises very engaging and for me they were the
main "thrill" of taking the course, but I understand that other people found
them very frustrating -- they were very vocal on the forums -- often for the
reasons you mentioned: the tools were hard to configure or confusing.

~~~
brudgers
For Odersky's class, _SICP_ is available for free on line and in dead-tree
form so there was plenty of background material to support the lectures [not
to mention the _SICP_ video lectures].

I just found the exercises for _Functional Programming in Scala_ to be
drudgery. That wasn't the case in Grossman's class. Odersky's class was full
of klunky complexity - SBT, IDE's, and Scala's compiler performance and the
warts of working on top of the JVM. Formatting the exercises partially
completed code just added to the mess [though the partially completed code
idea is a useful pedagogical approach].

On the other hand, Grossman's use of Emacs was one of the reasons I took the
course. I still use Emacs. I don't still use Eclipse or ScalaIDE.

~~~
the_af
You won't like the exercises in _Reactive Programming_ then. Not only are they
a confused mess that is difficult to relate to the source material, the source
material itself is confusing and poorly motivated.

PS: SICP is not written either by or for Coursera, or even particularly
adapted to it. If you use it as the main supporting material, what is the
point of Coursera at all? In contrast, Grossman's notes were written by him
and directly support his course.

------
benkant
In my experience, both with self-study and at university, the best way to gain
and retain knowledge is by working problems. To do this you need:
demonstrations of the concepts, problems, hints and solutions.

Hints and solutions can be time consuming to obtain at university (office
hours) and might be impossible if you can't find instructor manuals for self-
study.

Khan Academy makes the most sense to me. You work the problems until you
can't, at which point you use the hints or watch the videos. Then continue.

The only lectures that were useful to me at university was the first one,
where they discussed how the class would run, and the last one where they
discussed the exam.

Labs and tutorials were useful if I wanted to get hints on how to work
problems.

I agree with TFA. Videos should by no means be the focus. They can be very
helpful demonstrations. If the goal is to be able to solve problems, that's
what you should be spending the most time doing.

~~~
webwanderings
Not that I frequent many MOOCs, but I have not seen Khan Academy like
techniques anywhere else, not even at edX. I think KA's got it right. They've
got the best possible solution which will evolve things to the next level, if
MOOCs are to stay afloat in the future.

------
rayiner
I'm surprised this is a surprise. I thought it was common knowledge that
videos were a terrible medium for education. That was the lesson of the failed
1990's "multimedia education" push.

------
arikrak
I don't get why MOOCs are so focused on video. I think many people enjoy the
relaxed experience of watching a video more than reading, but why ignore
people who rather jump right into a text? A text is easier to skim search and
reference than a video, and easier to keep up-to-date for the creators.
However, I think the best option is a combination of text with visual and
interactive content, such as graphical representation of complex ideas and
manipulable formulas or code.

~~~
petercooper
_A text is easier to skim search and reference than a video_

That's great when you're refreshing or referencing, but when you're learning
something from scratch, text presents an easier opportunity to "skim" and miss
things than video which sorta decides the speed of the treadmill for you.

I'm the author of a book and the amount of queries I get that were answered on
the previous page.. I think many people just don't read every word in books
they read (but I sympathize, because neither do I).

~~~
arikrak
Right, you need to learn by doing and cannot just passively watch a video or
read a text. To learn a topic like programming, you need to practice it. So a
good format is to combine a text with small questions and coding challenges.
If the user is unsure of how to solve something, it's easier to look it up in
the text they read than in a video they watched. And hopefully they'll
recognize that the question is asking something they can answer on their own
without emailing the author. (Though once the text is online, there should be
some kind of forum there to ask questions anyways.)

(PS - I'm actually looking for programming authors or bloggers who would be
interested in publishing online with questions and programming challenges.)

------
ARothfusz
The video poison is spreading to software documentation too. I can't imagine a
bigger waste of time than watching someone type code or work on a command
line, yet I've gotten the request many times. For GUIs I can somewhat
sympathize, especially if the software changes the layout with every release
(I'm looking at you, Blender), and it really does take 1000 words to describe
where to click. But typed, word-oriented communication does not benefit from
videos. And unless you're Vi Hart, teaching mathematics probably isn't going
to benefit from an all-video presentation either. So, kudos to the author.

------
jrbeal
I'd be fine with a video-less MOOC. Just give me a textbook and tell me the
chapters to study and what assignments to work on, and I'll be fine. It's
difficult to do this on your own because you never know what to focus on
without guidance. You're likely to waste valuable time down some unimportant
or meaningless rabbit hole! Of course, I'd hope the MOOC would offer a support
mechanism in case I needed help.

~~~
freehunter
I was recently re-reading a textbook that I had in college and I realized just
how much of the book we skipped in class when I noticed how many chapters were
unfamiliar to me. I remembered how much we skipped around to put things in a
more logical order and what questions we skipped in the tests as well... not
sure why textbooks are often written to illogically that it takes a teacher to
decipher them.

~~~
fenfennek
I think Tim Ferris commented on this problem once in a Google Talk where the
topic of the quality of (text)books came up:

To a big part it comes down to the fact that ideas and chapters presented in
books are most often structured and sequenced in a way that suits the author
in writing it. Less about what would actually be the best way of presenting
the material from a learner's perspective.

------
haberdasher
I agree with most of this and am the developer of Presentious. We believe
audio paired with slides + a transcript with full-text search is better than
video 9/10 times. You can see it all in action here:
[http://presentio.us/view/p1tcHs](http://presentio.us/view/p1tcHs)

I'm actively seeking feedback and testers in the education space!

------
kbrwn
Recently completed MITx 600.001 which had a fair share of lectures along with
a textbook. The lectures were mostly just a rehashing of what was presented in
the book but there was something about watching the code run that really made
a difference. I also think that having "finger exercises" after a short video
explaining a concept is quite helpful. Although it seems that could easily be
achieved in book format as well. The live feedback after submitting code was
what helped me the most.

At the same time as this I took another course on a different website
(coursera) Cloud Computing Concepts Part 1 which was entirely lecture based.
The topic was extremely interesting to me and I have moved on to the next
course in the series but I do find the all lecture format with quiz based
homework to be less than ideal. I try to make up for the lack of a textbook by
reading the documentation of concepts covered each week but often times it is
hard to pick the most essential material.

The edx platform is really stunning in terms of engagement and feedback from a
student perspective. It is easy to imagine a course presented on it with
little to no lecture if a strong companion text was provided.

~~~
randomnumber53
My favorite thing about the MITx MOOCs are that they have really well-
designed, carefully-devised problem sets, which I think might be the most
important factor of a great class.

------
vacri
_In fact, as far back as 1971, Donald Bligh concluded that “there is not much
difference in the effectiveness of methods to present information.”_

Apart from 1971 having only nascent experience with educational videos, it's
really hard to accept that the science videos of the 50s and 60s were no more
effective at imparting information than a book. Seeing things move around as
the presenter talks about them can really help to understand the topic.

It really depends on the topic that's being discusses - sometimes a video is
better, sometimes a book is better, sometimes you absolutely have to get your
hands dirty. You can read a book all you want and watch videos 'til the cows
come home, but neither will make you proficient in tying a ligature.

I guess my problem with the statement is that it's absolutist. Some things are
better in text, some things are better shown, some things are better done in
person, not to mention other methods as well. Choose the appropriate tool for
the job. And know your audience as well - the 'general public' is different to
'self-motivated autodidacts', for example.

------
karmicthreat
Some of the most effective compsci related MOOCs I've found are the Udacity
programming MOOCs that have live coding. You can just drop right into a python
REPL and try using what you just learned. We need more of this in a variety of
domains.

------
rajacombinator
While I agree with the author on the relative uselessness of lectures/video, I
wonder how much this is related to individual learning styles. I definitely
observed many classmates who benefited more from lectures than I did.

------
ufo
The thing that bothers me more is how many of these MOOCS require you to sign
up to be able to watch the lectures. Sometime I would just like to watch some
of the lectures and not have to bother with assignments and quizzes.

------
bayesianhorse
Moocs wouldn't have the same pull if they didn't do video. There are reasons
why "E-Learning" never really took off before the MOOC movement.

Some part of this is that text books tend to be written as reference material,
and don't come with a "first learner's cut", a path through the material which
is suited for someone just starting to learn the subject.

Videos are a medium which seems to be easier to master for university
instructors than really good teaching texts. Don't ask me why...

------
mcbetz
It's not only MOOCs that use videos a lot. There are so many self publishers
who sell videos as a bonus to an ebook. At a premium price. Nathan Barry and
Brennan Dunn may be the most prominent examples for this and Barry even
advices this practice in his book "Authority" \- and he is successful with
this strategy. So obviously some customers perceive videos as an extra value
and are ready to pay the premium price.

------
MollyR
I read faster than I listen/watch. But I absorb information more completely
from video lectures. I often watch video lectures at 1.5 to 2x speed too.

------
pmontra
Some MOOC have both video and PDF slides. I remember a computer graphic corse
on Coursera. The videos were obviously useful in many ways but the PDFs were
better for finding the formulas when doing the tests.

------
laex
This reminds of the blog post by Adam Brimo, the founder of OpenLearning
([http://www.openlearning.com](http://www.openlearning.com)) - a MOOC startup
heavily focused around creating communities. It's short, so I'll just post it
here:

\--BEGIN POST-- Every profession and every professional engages with teaching
and learning in some capacity. Yet many individuals go through university or
higher education degrees and fail to learn to their full potential.

Why?

Because the learning environment is focused on content delivery. In both
online and offline educational settings, the structure of teaching and
learning is primarily instructional: the lecturer delivers content and the
student passively receives it. Lectures and tutorials are teacher-centred and
teacher-directed; the teacher possesses the knowledge and power within the
learning environment. There is rarely peer-to-peer learning, nor student
handover or empowerment within the learning process.

This of course incites some level of learning – if it didn’t, we would all
still be stuck in first-year university – but it doesn’t promote that deep,
conceptual understanding of a learning area that is the hallmark of rich
learning.

Despite the pervasiveness of the instructional model within higher education,
how people learn best isn’t through passively receiving content. Rich learning
occurs when students actively construct their own knowledge and understanding;
when they connect new information with their own world and when they are
intrinsically motivated in the process. This deep learning also happens
through interaction, discussion and collaboration with others.

Think about a topic you’re most excited and passionate about. Do you want to
be actively involved in your own learning process? Do you want to discuss and
share your experiences of the topic with your peers? Do you want to connect
new knowledge with your current awareness through real world examples, to
develop that deeper understanding? Do you want to be intrinsically motivated
to learn? Do you want to be empowered?

Or do you want to passively listen to an expert deliver a lecture?

OpenLearning wants to change the current model of higher education, to align
with how students really learn. We’re about empowering students in their
learning process; where learners can actively construct their own knowledge
that is relevant and meaningful to them.

We provide an online learning environment that fosters deep learning,
intrinsic motivation and collaboration with other students. We promote dynamic
communication through fun and interactive learning communities; where students
can discuss concepts, share relevant and meaningful media, and provide peer
review, support and feedback in a safe and positive learning space. We are
both the Learning Environment and the Student Hangout. Traditional educational
models see these as mutually exclusive entities; we see them as the same
thing.

Students love doing courses through our platform, because we speak in their
language. Individuals and organisations love running courses through our
platform, because students are engaged, intrinsically motivated and
productive.

The OpenLearning philosophy promotes a lifelong love of learning that
facilitates students reaching their full learning potential. \--END POST--

Full Disclosure: I work at OpenLearning.

~~~
ChanderG
Reminds me of the quote: "Education is not the filling of a bucket, but the
lighting of a fire." — William Butler Yeats. Sadly, very few institutions seem
to understand this.

