
Life After MOOCs - cedricr
http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/10/192385-life-after-moocs/fulltext
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baldfat
MOOCs are a great resource, for myself, that goes with books and other
attempts to educate those who can't be in an ideal learning environment. I
really dislike this quote:

"If I had my wish, I would wave a wand and make MOOCs disappear."

Sorry but there are some great MOOCs and some poor MOOCs but we are certainly
off better with them as opposed to without them.

~~~
amsilprotag
The presenter is making the same argument, as evidenced by pairing the above
quote with a quote criticizing the printing press.

"Life after MOOCs" is portending the replacement of low-feedback, low-
engagement MOOCs with the more social, self-paced, text-based offerings. I
think they have the right idea. Learners feel more mentally engaged editing
and browsing wikis or documentation, solving problems with peers, and
participating in Q&A with TAs rather than the traditional MOOC activities of
viewing tests and answering quizzes.

Code-learning platforms are already evolving past video, copy-pasting code,
and quizzes. freecodecamp is embracing social learning and forming peer
relationships. Codewars and codecombat are employing gamification elements to
increase engagement.

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jarcane
I was disappointed after the title. I was hoping to see something about the
actual benefits and end outcomes of MOOC students, not just more "I come not
to bury Caesar" level rhetoric.

My programming "education" such as it is, has all been through online courses,
and let me tell you it's not the life-changing experience in the real world
that its proponents are so desperate to sell. I'm curious as to whether
_anyone_ has actually managed to become employed this way, because from where
I'm sitting I'd be better off sticking to good old fashion usury in the form
of student loans.

~~~
wahsd
I'm not sure I follow. So you have programming "education" through online
courses, but you are essentially not sure whether you have made any
professional gains from it?

I think I am hearing that you are disillusioned by the rather unstructured and
disorderly state in which online "MOOC" type education is. There is no quality
or accuracy assurance due to a lack of common standards and practices, and
there is essentially no means for replicating a curriculum across systems and
content.

Is that about right? Or is there some other issue I am missing why you would
rather load yourself up with tens of thousands dollars for a brick-and-mortar
education?

I'm by not means a fan of this subject approach, but I'm more generally
curious about the issues.

~~~
jarcane
In a market where even people who have actual degrees struggle to overcome the
experience demands, someone without even that is pretty much fucked,
especially in a country like I live in where higher education is free.

I have managed to be, briefly, employed on an internship basis, but that was
short-lived, and once I started asking for and looking to more permanent
positions suddenly the opportunities started looking more than a bit scarce.

It seems like in an age of massive degree inflation, the self-taught basement
hacker doesn't really have a place anymore, while a lot of those same basement
hackers who actually made it and have been in the industry ten or twenty years
keep giving the same bad "you don't need a degree" type advice.

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marktangotango
>> if we had a wand, we would not wish away MOOCs but rather transform them
into a more effective educational product called a massive adaptive
interactive text (MAIT) that can compete with a professor in a classroom. We
further argue that computer science is a discipline in which this transition
is about to happen.

Makes me think of the interactive books in Neal Stephepsons 'The Diamond Age'.

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droithomme
The authors start by quoting an anti-MOOCer: "If I had my wish, I would wave a
wand and make MOOCs disappear."

There are many fantastic MOOCs that are on par with or exceed the best college
classes I took at a top ranked school.

Yet article after article from certain sectors proclaims MOOCs a failure and
asserts or suggests students are getting ripped off or cheated of a proper
education, doomed to failure, should be erased from history, etc.

Since these people clearly do not know what they are talking about, yet
clearly choose to intentionally misrepresent things to promote various
agendas, they are unreliable sources and their opinions about everything else
are unreliable as well.

However, in this case, this article is written by Compeau and Pevzner. I have
taken their Bioinformatics sequence, which I found to be among the better
MOOCs around. It is very challenging and the interactive textbook which
compels the student to write code in any language they fancy and solve
problems with that code works quite well. Therefore these authors _do_ know
what they are talking about in this case. Whether this approach can or should
be extended to history or art classes is not clear.

Textbooks are expensive and can be difficult to access for students outside
the western world. A lack of texts has been an issue in many MOOCs and has
limited the depth of some classes. This has been addressed in many well done
science classes, such as Melbourne's remarkable Epigenetic Control of Gene
Expression by selecting open access academic journal papers and assigning them
to students to read, and requiring the articles be understood to pass the
assessments. Some other classes have arranged with publishers to make
copyright restricted materials available for a limited time period to students
enrolled in the class. These approaches, are quite good as well compared to a
textbook, perhaps even better as they can cover cutting edge results for which
textbooks have not even been written.

Yet another approach is to recommend textbooks as a supplement to the class
material. I have found this useful for some classes, especially when I am able
to get previous editions used for close to the cost of shipping.

Another approach is when the professor self publishes a print on-demand text
for the class, and makes it optional, with the text also available for free.
In these cases these texts have often shot to the top of the sales rankings in
their category.

It's very true that interactive texts that give immediate feedback are a
valuable pedagogical tool which when implemented well approaches the value of
working with a tutor. It's also valuable to have well designed forums where
students can discuss problems they are having with other students who have
solved the same problems. Compeau and Pevzner's texts have comments per page
and don't ban discussion of techniques used to solve problems, or tricky bits
that were not obvious. These discussions are very helpful for non-trivial
problems that take hours to solve when one gets stuck. Students need to
refrain from posting actual code of course and this has been the case. These
context tied mini discussions are comparable to having a very good study group
or TA session available in a university class. General and sectional
discussion forums not tied to specific pages, are also needed as well. On
Coursera in particular this is well designed and there are often fantastic
contributions to new research posted by knowledgable students, as well as the
discussions by students that one would experience at a brick and mortar
school, but with a transcript and references built in, which makes them in
some ways even more valuable than face to face conversations.

