
The perils of online college learning - petethomas
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20130728,0,2408536.column
======
larsonf
This article and a lot of the articles on the San Jose State are all of over
the map when it comes to improving MOOCs: more TAs, more focus on the content,
etc. They _do_ , however, share one major thing: that half of the kids failing
the SJSU class is, in fact, a problem that we need to fix.

 _What?_

What about the other half of the kids? Think about it. This was an online
class, with presumably very little (if any!) vetting of the students, with
little or no supervision (they didn't even know a lot of the kids didn't have
computers until three weeks in!), and a whole 50% _didn 't_ fail? I mean, this
isn't a failure, this is a revolution.

Let's face it, these courses aren't designed to signal anything more than
competency and --arguably-- the only way to actually display your competency
to the world is to have not everyone pass. Because imagine if everyone _did_
pass? You would go to your future employer and say, "Yeah, so, I took this
course, online, where not a single person failed, and it's obvious that I'm
competent, because they have this, ya know, innovative learning algorithm." If
everyone passed than you might as well do MIT OCW. Which, by the way, is the
exact same thing as a library, which we've had in every modernized
municipality on the planet for 200 years.

No, online education is to regular education as the CFA is to an MBA. What is
it, like 30% of people pass the CFA? Yeah, 30%! But no one is clamoring about
how the CFA needs to be fixed. Quite the opposite--it's the gold standard. And
not only that, it's downright democratic: anyone can take it in the world, and
if you _are_ in fact one of the ones that pass, the certification really does
mean something. I mean, people put CFA after their name!

That's the future in online education. Not prestige, not A-'s and B+'s, and
not feel-good relationships with professors: no, it's cold-hard certifications
and frankly it's a godsend.

~~~
keithpeter
50% pass is quite good compared to Learndirect in the early days. An overview
with links to more detail[1]

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learndirect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learndirect)

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WalterBright
It isn't about replacing in person instruction with online. It is about making
college courses available to anyone.

At the turn of the 20th century, my grandfather certainly could not afford
college. He did what people at the time did who wanted to get a college degree
- he took it by correspondence (by mail).

He liked it enough that he started a business selling correspondence courses.
He met my grandmother through selling her engineering courses (she was a
mechanic for the phone company).

Online courses are just a modern version of that.

~~~
wyclif
This is what I've been trying to get across to people in the wave of FUD
that's been going around for the last year or so. It's clear a lot of
educators feel threatened by MOOCs, but I truly wish they would consider how
many people worldwide are priced out of a college education.

~~~
mdt
Why? Their opinions are irrelevant.

It's not nice of me to say, but it's true. People only ever come around after
the fact. Sitting around advocating positions in hopes of furthering
corresponding causes is perhaps the most/least efficient way never to
accomplish anything.

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jcnnghm
I think the real failure here is the belief that the majority of people need
to pass for something to be worthwhile. It doesn't seem likely that online
learning will work better for everyone, but I strongly suspect that it will
work better for some subset of people. In the long run, personalization will
be extremely important in education.

Have you ever had a great teacher you really engaged with, but also heard from
other people that they didn't really like the teacher? For myself, I'd say
that I've found that only about 5% of teachers are actually engaging, with
depressingly few of those before college. Imagine if you had a personal
learning profile built up over your education, so that over time you were
matched with the best possible (world-class) instructor for your learning
style for every class. I'd bet most of the people here were near the top of
their class; imagine never having to slow down for anyone, and automatically
skipping reinforcement you don't need, so you can learn and advance as quickly
as you are able. I think some people respond best to coursera style lectures,
others respond better to Udacity-style continuous socratic method lessons,
while others respond better to group work and discussion. Why bother trying
one-size-fits-all solutions, when technology can allow for direct
personalization. My Netflix experience isn't like anyone else's, why should my
education.

I think there is actually a great opportunity to build a platform business in
this space, where different instructors can design and build different types
of courses. Imagine 20 different calculus courses, but the student only sees
one. The best lessons are cherry-picked for them, and the curriculum and
delivery is tailored to the rate that they are learning. I'd really like to
build something like that, if anybody else wants to give it a shot, shoot me
an email.

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visarga
> Anyone who has come into personal contact with an inspiring professor at the
> top of his or her field knows that the experience can't be reproduced by
> remote control.

I was in Andrew Ng's first class of Machine Learning. He is one of the best
professors I have ever had the pleasure to learn from, online or offline. He
can transmit his passion for machine learning plenty well through video.

It's not the medium. It's some of the professors that teach online courses
that haven't risen up to the standard imposed in the first classes.

If it's going to be an online class for millions, then at least find the most
inspirational speaker you can before starting to record. Coursera has grown up
too fast for its own good, probably many classes are just so-and-so.

Then the author goes on to say:

> My own entire graduate school experience was made worthwhile by a single
> extraordinary teacher, without whom it might have been an utter waste of
> time.

Exactly what I thought. Many people pass through brick-and-mortar universities
wasting most of the time and money. It's not like real life education has
magic. All it has is a real life person monitoring your presence in the
lecture hall. It is just a little bit of motivation that is added on top.

We could simulate that with human monitoring - we don't need professors to
monitor people taking online classes. We could do with "coaches"/people with
psychological skill that would also have access to the students' online stats
and have regular contact with the students.

Everybody works better when their efforts are being acknowledged. We are
social animals and rely a lot on the social signals to build our motivation.
So, why don't we just think of a way to have this aspect of offline learning
in MOOCs?

~~~
Zigurd
Recently my son and I were watching Sussman's 6.001 SICP lectures on YouTube.
That has the effect of enabling my son to see what I learned decades ago from
a very inspiring professor, and in period costume. It makes we wish there were
videos of Doc Edgerton teaching Strobe Lab.

It seems as if the reason for the "failure" of the SJ State experiment is that
they underestimated the fall-off rate. That may be an indicator something was
wrong with the courses, or there might be nothing at all wrong with the
courses and that's the fall-off rate you get at a $150 price. The article
doesn't give a hint.

The real threats to MOOCs probably come from the threat of cheating debasing
the value of degrees and certifications that use MOOCs. But if the quality of
assignment grading and exams can be kept high, the fall-off rate mentioned in
the article is just a characteristic to be managed.

------
0003
I think the author buried the lead... Let's say 40% passed. At 7.5% of the
cost of normal tuition, I would say this is a net positive. The students who
passed have course credits and saved over 93% what they normally would have
spent and the students who did not pass were able to see if college is right
for them, without being destroyed by debt.

Not that the author's views are without merit, but this feels like it was
warped into a story about greedy university administrators and profit-blind
venture capitalists.

~~~
ihnorton
Also buried (on the second page) was this nugget:

 _The school explains the courses ' high failure rate by saying the students
were "an atypical sample" — half were San Jose State students who had already
failed the courses once.

The other half were students from an underprivileged Oakland high school. Many
of the latter had no computer access, a fact the school only discovered three
weeks into the online term._

~~~
hmsimha
This should be the first comment on this page.

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Paul_D_Santana
What kind of complete and utter _idiocy_ is this?

50% of these brand new college students passed an _entirely online_ course at
a _tiny fraction_ of the cost for the student, a _tiny fraction_ of the cost
for the university, at an infinitely increased level of convenience.

Does no one else see this as downright _incredible_?

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mikevm
> Anyone who has come into personal contact with an inspiring professor at the
> top of his or her field knows that the experience can't be reproduced by
> remote control; my own entire graduate school experience was made worthwhile
> by a single extraordinary teacher, without whom it might have been an utter
> waste of time.

As a CS undergrad, I can tell you that I've studied under a few professors
that are famous academically, but the lectures themselves were nothing to
write home about. In fact, when video was available for a course, I'd save
myself an hour of commuting and just watch the lecture at home.

There might be certain disciplines where the style of the lecture is more
dynamic, and where the lecturer needs to interact with the students, but I
don't believe this to be the case with STEM subjects. Graduate school might be
different, but I don't know much about that.

> But what the school also overlooked is that students with academic problems
> may not be the best candidates for distance learning. "They need people
> almost literally holding their hands, watching them do work," says Newfield,
> "being there when they get frustrated at the moment when that happens."

No one cares if you fail courses, and no one holds your hand in the
University. The professor doesn't know you, and he isn't going to check up on
your progress. The only difference is that you the professor might have office
hours where you can ask him questions personally (something not many students
do, by the way).

~~~
seanmcdirmid
The worst professor I had, for a physics prerequisite, was a Nobel prize
winner. Suffice it to say, I got my highest grade out of all my physics
prereqs by explicitly not attending lecture and just studying through that
hour. But our physics program also had labs and smaller mandatory group
sessions guided by TAs, which is where most of the learning happened anyways.

That being said, for students in trouble, the university can provide a lot of
resources that are not related to lectures (TAs, study centers, office hours,
etc...).

------
Tichy
The article doesn't really convince me that there are perils. Turns out the
class where 50% of students failed was one were lots of students had already
failed the course before, and a a major other part of the students didn't have
access to a computer. Surely MOOC isn't for everyone, as it probably provides
less hand holding. It's still a great resource - I have already learned a lot
from such courses.

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lmartel
As someone who has taken large lecture classes both in person and online,
there's really no difference. A seminar is one thing, but no one gets anything
interactive out of a class in a 300+ person lecture hall.

More students failed because they lowered the bar; I sure as hell won't fail a
class I pay $2000 for but I might lose interest in one I paid $150 for.
There's nothing wrong with a "low" pass rate in this case, it's just a
different situation.

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revelation
At my university, quite some classes have 50% failure rates, especially
introductory. What's so special about that that its deemed a failure?

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prostoalex
"They pointed to the risk that the edX model would lead to two classes of
universities: a top tier "in which privileged students get their own real
professor; the other, financially stressed private and public universities in
which students watch a bunch of video-taped lectures and interact with … a
glorified teaching assistant."

Unless a college professor is a thought leader in the field, with influential
publications and books, aren't most of them "glorified teaching assistants"
already, teaching from other people's books and distributing other people's
papers for further reading and discussion?

~~~
mikevm
Even if the professor is a thought leader in his field, that doesn't mean he
can teach well (and from experience, not many of them can).

------
rndmize
> "Having a scholar teach and engage his or her own students in person is far
> superior to having those students watch a video of another scholar engaging
> his or her own students," the professors wrote.

I beg to differ. Lecturing has been demonstrated to be a flatly terrible
method of instruction/learning, and I see minimal difference between watching
a professor 50 feet away versus on a screen. When the educational method is so
poor that a minimal number of students learn anything from it they couldn't
learn studying textbooks on their own, digitizing it can hardly make it much
worse.

[http://www.npr.org/2012/01/01/144550920/physicists-seek-
to-l...](http://www.npr.org/2012/01/01/144550920/physicists-seek-to-lose-the-
lecture-as-teaching-tool)

This article illustrates the flaws with lecturing and, by proxy, with the
current efforts made by MOOCs, Khan Academy, and so on. Ironically, this is
not new information. People like Maria Montessori developed teaching methods
more than a hundred years ago by studying children and constructing tools,
classrooms and methods of instruction around how they learned.

From the linked article -

> Mazur's physics class is now different. Rather than lecturing, he makes his
> students do most of the talking.

> At a recent class, the students — nearly 100 of them — are in small groups
> discussing a question. Three possible answers to the question are projected
> on a screen. Before the students start talking with one another, they use a
> mobile device to vote for their answer. Only 29 percent got it right. After
> talking for a few minutes, Mazur tells them to answer the question again.

> This time, 62 percent of the students get the question right. Next, Mazur
> leads a discussion about the reasoning behind the answer. The process then
> begins again with a new question. This is a method Mazur calls "peer
> Instruction." He now teaches all of his classes this way.

> "What we found over now close to 20 years of using this approach is that the
> learning gains at the end of the semester nearly triple," he says.

Maria Montessori recommended teaching children in age groups of 3 years at a
time (3-6 year olds in one classroom, 7-9 in another, etc.) The final stage of
learning material is when you can teach it to others, and requires a greater
mastery; hence, a classroom that spans ages/grades provides opportunities for
older students to instruct younger ones and strengthen their own knowledge of
the material.

This is effectively what Mazur has rediscovered and applied; by having
students debate among themselves, the ones that are correct and hence, have a
better understanding of the material, can explain to the others their
reasoning behind their choice, as well as improving their grasp by having to
defend against questions from the others.

Montessori also developed a wide variety of tools and "works" for students to
use, allowing for a kinesthetic learning experience (something I would
consider vastly more effective than lecture or video at younger ages, and of
continuing importance even through college) - note that when Mazur's students
largely got the question concerning gravity wrong, even after learning the
mechanics of it in lecture, he resorted to practical demonstrations. There are
few better examples of this than the Binomial Cube, which is introduced in
Montessori preschools(!)

[http://www.montessoriworld.org/sensory/sbinoml.html](http://www.montessoriworld.org/sensory/sbinoml.html)

Preschool students are not expected to understand the math behind the cube,
which is after all algebra, but the work is meant to prime them for when they
do encounter it several years down the line, as well as providing a physical
construct that the math can be related back to at that point.

Which brings me to my final point: rather than trying to move traditional,
ineffective methods of instruction online, edtech really should be aiming to
maximize the learning capabilities of computers, which can allow things and
methods of learning that simply aren't possible in the physical world. For
example, the binomial cube, as good as it is, is still a fairly complex
concept; a computer representation of it could extend it by allowing a student
to reshape pieces in a 3D space, or provide values for the x, y and z
variables and see how the cube transforms. This would allow for an even more
powerful and intuitive understanding of how the pieces, sides and full cube
relate to the binomial equation; and its manipulation that you could only do
in a virtual environment.

That said, I don't really expect this to happen any time soon. Newspapers are
still being dragged kicking and screaming into the digital age; I'd guess
genuinely effective new teaching methods will similarly take years to come
together. (It might be useful to start by discarding the concept of a "class"
and look to MMOs for inspiration - material created for people at a variety of
levels of understanding, with no real required time frame, where students can
form groups to tackle difficult concepts/projects, or mentor others...)

------
runarberg
Failing a class doesn't tell me anything. What does it even mean? Did 50% of
the student not learn the material, didn't they learn but parts of it, what
were the requirements, the criteria for "passing"? Who made that criteria, and
what was it based on?

A single pass/fail ratio from a single case study doesn't tell me anything.
Especially if the data is not explained.

