
Data Mining Exposes Embarrassing Problems For Massive Open Online Courses - jonbaer
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/522816/data-mining-exposes-embarrassing-problems-for-massive-open-online-courses/
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ansible
_Only about half of the students who registered ever viewed a lecture and only
4 per cent completed a course._

My response to that is: "Yeah, so?"

I've signed up for a few classes in the past. I had somewhat underestimated
the amount of time I had available to spend on these classes. And then things
like work also ramped up, and I didn't finish any of them. Since I didn't pay
anything for them, I didn't feel guilty about "dropping" them either.

But I did learn at least something from each of them. Two of them I might try
to take again some day.

The relevant question is: "How many people are completing these classes?"

I just think it is awesome in general to have more and more good instructional
material available.

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tokenadult
Somebody could make money from me by offering an accredited, for-credit course
that mostly tests my understanding of a subject gained from reading I have
already done. What I dislike intensely about MOOCs is that I still have to
watch lectures (they are often mandatory, and are especially likely to be
mandatory if you are taking the course for actual accredited credit). I can
read much faster than anyone can talk. Prerecorded video lectures on MOOCs can
be played back at double speed, but they are still linear-access rather than
random-access that the way a well indexed book is. So I think there is still a
market for online courses, but with the testing being more online and more
decoupled from the instruction as such.

