
Why we need more than “learn at your own pace” online learning - salbowski
https://blog.brainstation.io/why-we-need-more-than-learn-at-your-own-pace/
======
frv103
I'm not sure that course completion percentage is necessarily the best metric
to be drawing conclusions from. I will often sign up for MOOCs and courses for
a single talk, chapter, or topic that I'm interested in with no intention of
actually completing the course. I wonder I'm an outlier in this regard or if
this approach is much more common than the author of this article realizes.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
These are aspirational course sign ups, and are of course similar to
aspirational book purchases (where I will learn a new language through psychic
connection between the desk the book is on and the my hands on the desk) and
aspirational gym membership (where calories will be burnt simply because my
body knows it might go to the gym and so gets all worried and sweaty anyway)

~~~
komali2
Yea, gym membership is a good comparison, actually. I know tons of people who
signed up for a gym and never went, which means we could use the same argument
the article does to insinuate that "signing up for a gym on your own is an
ineffective way to get fit."

Clearly there are more effective (and more expensive) ways to get fit, but
some people manage on their own with a gym membership and access to /r/fitness
or whatever, so it's not exactly ineffective.

~~~
InitialLastName
> some people manage on their own with a gym membership and access to
> /r/fitness or whatever, so it's not exactly ineffective.

Some people manage to get fit on their own _without_ a gym membership or any
equipment at all, so it's not exactly effective either.

------
qwerty456127
I believe education and testing/certification should always be considered 2
perfectly separate things and, ideally, done by different parties. There
should be companies that educate people seeking to acquire knowledge and there
should be companies that test people seeking a formal confirmation of their
knowledge and issue them certificates. No exams should exist in an ideal
university, their job is to educate you an this is what they are to specialize
in. But this hardly is a good idea for MOOCs from the financial point of view
as charging for certification is the way MOOCs earn money to fund the whole
operation so they can keep the actual education part free.

~~~
nothis
Something I noticed is that exams are what we're always coming back to in
terms of education. Employers want a confirmation that you learned something.
That's a university degree. Even with respected websites offering
confirmations, how can you trust that and how do you keep track of every
website's quality?

I noticed this about all those "machine learning courses" that are getting
posted here. Facebook and Google basically hand them out for free, hundreds of
hours worth of quality learning material. Top universities let you watch all
their lectures online. So what's the catch? Why aren't we all machine learning
experts already? Because it's hard to muster the energy unless you commit to
earning a degree by, yes, studying for exams. Turns out that's actually
thousands of hours of work so the "convenience" part of online courses kinda
starts to fade.

I definitely noticed that the quality difference between a good university and
a bad one is often about how much they value "education" beyond just being an
"exam machine". Presenting facts from the point of view of someone new to
them, presenting methods of how to deal with edge cases and traps, taking one-
on-one tutoring sessions seriously.

But yea, the end result is getting confirmation for having passed a bunch of
exams.

~~~
Eridrus
I don't think this is an accurate assessment of education in the ML space.
There are tonnes of people who have self-taught themselves the material. The
issue I see is that employers do not trust non-university credentials, and so
there is a strong hiring bias towards PhD graduates, regardless of whether it
is warranted.

~~~
dwrodri
I think a big part of this comes from the lack of emphasis on group projects
and technical communication in MOOCs. How many MOOCs have you seen where
you're actually encouraged to work in groups, and then eventually present your
work?

Even though the concept of an MOOC has been around for quite some time now,
it's only recently that their curricula at the course level is __actually
__consistently on par with what would be seen in a good university environment
(think like "Top 50" University).

~~~
Eridrus
Most self-taught people I have met have come up with their own projects, or at
least played with Kaggle, as people are usually advised to do. MOOCs are only
a small part of the options people can and do exercise.

~~~
seventhtiger
Self driven education has always existed. At least as long as you could check
out books in the library. The Internet made it more convenient, but it didn't
make it any easier. Most people thrive in a structured environment with
superiors and peers. That's why universities are so much more successful than
libraries.

There's also the problem of knowing what you don't know. If an expert in the
field is educating you they will give you a full picture of the field and
what's important in it. But if you're self taught you can miss entire areas
and never realize their importance from reading academic sources.

I'm not against self teaching or MOOCs at all. I just think they need more
structure and require more commitment to be as useful as university is to
society. They're a bit too casual, requiring much more self drive which is
harder than just setting deadlines and exams.

------
hackermailman
The most interesting self-learning platform I've found is expii.com created by
Poh-Shen Lo [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Po-
Shen_Loh](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Po-Shen_Loh) It feeds you exercises
and judging by your answers determines if you need more practice or not using
an Elo rating system
[https://v1.expii.com/grandmaster](https://v1.expii.com/grandmaster) though I
get the argument of having students pay for certs ergo they actually complete
the courses, this other method seems to me to work just as well as paid
motivation.

~~~
yorwba
Systems that keep track of your learning progress and automatically schedule
exercises are probably the future of learning, but I'm not sure whether the
approach taking by expii.com is good enough yet.

I did a few calculus questions and noticed two aspects which I think could be
improved:

1) the multiple-choice question format makes questions easier than they
appear. I solved a differential-equation question by differentiating all 4
possible solutions, I would have been unable to solve it otherwise.

2) Most questions require combining several pieces of knowledge to arrive at a
solution, but the Elo rating only keeps track of a score for the type of
question. If you mess up a chain-rule question by misremembering the
derivative of the inverse cosecant function, then you should get more
questions about the inverse cosecant function rather than the chain rule, and
vice versa.

That said, changing those two things would require a lot of work, so I
understand why it is the way it is.

~~~
qwerty456127
As for the second problem, it also applies to DuoLingo: at some point I get
bored by repetitive easy questions, start clicking too fast, make a mistake
(or even a misclick) purely out of insufficient attention (while the correct
answer is actually obvious to me) and get more boring questions on the same
topic.

------
DavidHm
Strongly disagree.

What you get from MOOCs is directly proportional to how seriously you approach
them. Yes, MOOCs do less handholding (aka: forcing adults to behave like
adults) than traditional university courses.

But they are also 100x cheaper and easier to access. If you approach them the
right way you can get way more. I do still believe that for your 1st degree a
traditional university is still the right choice, but there's no reason to
return to university after graduation.

~~~
zerkten
> Yes, MOOCs do less handholding (aka: forcing adults to behave like adults)
> than traditional university courses.

It's interesting how much this varies globally. In the UK I had zero hand-
holding for my undergraduate degree. In the last two years of high school
there would be constant reminders that this would be coming. You'd turn up to
lectures, occasionally have coursework that at most counted for 30% of the
overall course. There was very limited access to the lecturer outside of the
lectures, and occasionally their grad students would help with labs. Most of
that was by design, but there was the ability for faculty to get by with
minimal effort and not face consequences.

For some courses, I wish I had had access to the level of hand holding that
seems to exist in the US at the undergraduate level. Overall, I think that the
experience of being left to my devices has worked out better in the long-run,
even if my results at the undergraduate level could have been better.

~~~
aleksei
Yes, the university life portrayed in American tv shows is also quite
unfamiliar to Nordics.

Your experience mirrors mine in Finland. You could enrol for a course and only
turn up for the exams. No one cared whether you attended the lectures or the
exercise sessions, you were simply expected to be able to apply the material
by the end of the course.

However it depended heavily on faculty or even field. I think the humanists
had to attend many of their lectures, while the exact sciences didn't have
such requirements (although the physics department also insisted on handing in
exercises; profs probably got tired of grading people trying their luck).

I felt I was lucky for the freedom I was granted, although I too felt I would
have liked more face to face teaching for some courses (it also allowed for
making poor decisions regarding priorities, though I have no regrets).

I think other students had the same sentiments, and difficult courses began
having more free-form sessions in addition to lectures and exercises. I feel
this is a pretty good compromise of sorts, as it allows for different styles
of learning, and you could even hold a day job while studying, or live out of
city etc. as you're not forced to be physically present.

~~~
rootusrootus
I went to a state university in Oregon...

> You could enrol for a course and only turn up for the exams

And aside from a few exceptions, this is exactly how I approached my studies.
I'd show up on day 1, the day of each midterm, and the last day of class
before the final exam.

~~~
Spooky23
I did this as well. I had to take “economic statistics”, as it was discovered
late in my senior year that AP Stats couldn’t be used in my major.

I didn’t show up at all, as the class notes were available online and all
assignments were online submission (on a VAX, of all things in 1999). When I
arrived at the midterm, the professor called the UPD, as he had never seen me
before.

~~~
shard
Back in college there was a class where all exams were take-home, and all
homeworks and exams could be deposited in the professor's mailbox. I read the
text, did homework with my classmates, passed the exams, and never even found
out what the professor looked like.

------
nemo44x
For "learn at your own pace" trainings, the key to ensuring people take the
entire thing and do the labs is to make each training "course" very small and
consumable in a short period of time. Have it focus on a specific thing
someone would want to do within the domain of the greater problem. This lets
people pick and choose which isolated topics (can have pre-req's) they need to
take and because they can learn the task quickly they have a high rate of
completion.

Creating mountains for people to climb isn't always the best approach. By
creating a series of small foothills, learners can pick and choose which tasks
they need experience on and I believe this also leads to better skill
retention.

~~~
bluGill
While your point is valid, the counter is there are some difficult things that
would never be done. Some problems are hard or take a long time.

"War and Peace" is not a book you can study as a single short task. Breaking
it down doesn't work because every class assumes you have read it recently and
done the previous class - we would end up with thousands of people who
complete just one or two classes and very few who complete the entire
sequence. If completion is the goal we would still fail. Maybe you can call
some units optional, but the value requires you to complete most of the
sequence.

~~~
j45
Agreed, but you can break down all large tasks into small ones.

We don't read war and peace in one sitting either, we read part of a chapter.
Likewise working through materials can be done in smaller pieces while part of
a larger whole.

The monolith structure of a course that can't be broken down is the challenge.

~~~
bluGill
Right, but if you read chapter one of war and peace you can't take a year off
and then read chapter two. Not only would you never finish, but you would
forget to much that the whole wouldn't make sense. If you are going to read
the book you can take it chapter by chapter, but you should finish in a couple
weeks at worst.

------
scarface74
I've learned everything I know for the last 20+ years after graduating from
college at my own pace. I'm sure that's true for most developers.

~~~
MrEfficiency
When you have a project, you learn by necessity.

When you are taking a course to expand your abilities, you learn voluntarily.

I find learning via projects is the fastest and most useful. I am unsure if I
will take courses ever again.

~~~
scarface74
I never learn voluntarily. Anything I learn is either for my current job, or
the next job I’m looking to get - whether I am actively looking or not.

For instance, I’m not going to learn the intricacies of Rust to scratch an
itch if I see that there are no jobs for it.

Does that make me mercenary and show a lack of “passion”? Probably.

~~~
fredsir
> I never learn voluntarily

Are there nothing you do out of passion? I'm sure there is. You got any
hobbies? I'm sure you learn about that voluntarily.

~~~
scarface74
No hobbies that require learning. My free time is consumed by exercise and
just spending time with my wife.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy development and learning more about software
development/architecture, but I focus that on what’s marketable.

~~~
fredsir
> My free time is consumed by exercise and just spending time with my wife.

Plenty of learning involved with that. Spending time with you wife means
constantly learning about her, and about you and her in tandem. Exercising
means constantly learning about your body and the exercises you do, and the
combination of those parts. Of course, it is possible to spend time with
someone as well as exercising without learning anything, but it seems you a
voluntarily involved in both, so my guess is that you are not resisting
learning but are instead voluntarily learning :)

------
j45
I've been a technologist in academic and industry online education for almost
20 years.

Life is not linear. Why are traditional education and MOOCs linear and
monolothic? Career paths are no longer linear, but so much education continues
to be linear.

The pace of innovation adoption in education is very slow, partially due to
the lack of technological abilities of leadership and management in education.
There is often little vision, and where there might be, there is fear.

MOOCs do not represent all, or the best forms of online learning. They
represent the best of what non technical educators came up with.

MOOC structures are clearly late 90's/early 2000's, I know because I worked on
a platform to deliver high school education. Little has changed. Education has
moved forward very little, the devices, connectivity, and videos have gotten
sexier, but it's too often more of the same.

If anything, MOOCs are a concoction of academia working to deliver traditional
lectures digitally, but not using the digital medium as well as it could be.

MOOCs have a place in the world still to be effective, it's just not a gold
standard or a silver bullet.

70% of learning is informal and outside of the classroom. MOOCs generally do
not address this well.

Self-directed learning is going to be a real thing, because it already is. We
search constantly for answers on mobile, to construct new abilities.

Academic Institutions are losing a lot of money and it's estimated at least
1/3rd will close in the next 10 years. Many simply cannot keep up with the
rate of change in today's world of disruption in a few years. Most existing
curriculum is for positions that don't change often.

A completion percentage is a poor metric because it does not measure
comprehension and competencies/skills.

~~~
DelightOne
> Self-directed learning is going to be a real thing, because it already is.
> We search constantly for answers on mobile, to construct new abilities.

The current options are abysmal, sadly.

~~~
j45
It really is abysmal, between the ineffecifencies of creating content,
delivering it and keeping it looking to the future instead of anchored in the
past.

Still I'm starting to feel optimistic for the first time in a long time.

There is a horizon on the future, finally thanks to the convergence of more
accessible connectivity, devices and capabilites of digital experiences in the
next 2 years.

~~~
DelightOne
> There is a horizon on the future, finally thanks to the convergence of more
> accessible connectivity, devices and capabilites of digital experiences in
> the next 2 years.

For services and apps to emerge, to make things less abysmal? I don’t see what
you are hopeful for, what the given things would change.

~~~
j45
It's more about the content itself than the platforms/services and apps..
although those are issues too.

Today most places are creating content a 20 year old way. It can't keep up
with today's pace or depth of ongoing changes, or how quickly education
content is needed on new topics in the future.

~~~
DelightOne
I think it boils down to features which are not currently available, which
hamper self-directed learning today.

Is it that what you mean with „new capabilities of digital experiences“ and
„creating content a 20 year old way“? Or do you talk about the formats they
are created in?

------
arminiusreturns
This is more like an ad for brainstation pretending to be an analysis of
online learning, and it does neither well at all...

------
brogrammernot
This seems to leave out a large contributing factor, cost.

Many, many of the MOOCs I’ve ever done were free or a nominal cost ($5-20).

When you’re attending a class at a university or even a local community
college you’ve put in a lot of initial work to just get into the class
(applying, transcripts, student portal straight out of 1977 that makes MSDOS
look pretty) compounded that at minimum you’re paying $300 for a 3 credit
class before any book fees.

There’s tremendous more skin in the game for those classes than a MOOC so it’s
not an apples to apples comparison.

~~~
cabaalis
> student portal straight out of 1977

I remember when signing up for classes at my uni circa 2002, the easiest way
was to call into the scheduling system. The man speaking to you from the
automated system was a professor who had died years earlier.

So I'll one-up your old student portal by saying that to sign up for classes
at my university, I had to communicate with the dead. :)

------
groovybits
The main justification for the argument in this article is: 'Learn at your own
pace is ineffective because dropout rates are high'. However, the source
article [1] that references the dropout rates also questions whether dropout
rates is an accurate measurement of whether this learning style is effective
or not.

I'm not an expert on education, but logically, I'm thinking that effectiveness
relies on an end result in the first place. That is, can you measure the
effectiveness of MOOCs when the course(s) where not completed to begin with.
That's like me saying that traditional in-classroom classes were in-effective
because I dropped out of college. I would wager that measuring something such
as hiring rate after course completion would provide a better metric.

Edit: Including the source article in question

[1]
[https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/03/08/researchers-e...](https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/03/08/researchers-
explore-who-taking-moocs-and-why-so-many-drop-out)

~~~
watwut
The study I seen that measured successful by drop out rates compared loval
paid students with other local paid students.

E.g. They were trying to see whether they save money that way.

------
linuxftw
> Creating this was the driving force behind BrainStation’s Online Live course
> offerings, which are powered by Synapse, our very own data-driven learning
> platform.

This is thinly veiled marketing for their services.

------
tombert
I'm currently a student with SUNY Empire State College with their online
program, which is semi learn-at-your-own-pace. There are deadlines on the
assignments, and you have to communicate with other students in order to get
the grade.

Personally, I greatly prefer it. The first statement "Learners Need to Attend
to Succeed" is sort of double edged; my first try at college, I _didn 't_
attend class for a variety of reasons (mostly depression), and I know well
enough that if I were required to go to a physical classroom while working
full time, there's no chance I'd actually show up. By allowing me to work at
home when it's most convenient for me, I actually do the assigned reading and
homework.

Also, the line "Learners Need Access to Expertise" strikes me as a bit
strange; do people have problems finding experts on stuff? For my online
school, I can bother the professor for help whenever I need it, but I also
don't have too much trouble finding someone smarter than me on IRC.

------
adamnemecek
The main problem is that most people taking these courses also have a “main”
thing going on (job or school) and can’t dedicate 100 percent to self
education. If self education was considered a legitimate third option besides
job and school, the opinions would be different.

I’ve spent the last two years self educating myself (in addition to working on
something). I’ve never felt so intellectually engaged and just idk alive? All
the hard shit that you might struggle with becomes trivial if you spend a
little more time on it.

------
commandlinefan
Well, the author is assuming that high grades are perfectly correlated with
learning and retention - I'm not so sure that's the case. I understand why we
need grades as a motivator and a metric, but they're only part of the story. I
got a decent grade when I took undergraduate calculus 25 years ago, but I
didn't really learn or retain much - at best, it was in my mind that if I ever
needed to figure a rate of change, then I would probably have to go look up
how to do derivatives. On the other hand, I recently came across my old
undergraduate calculus textbook and started re-reading it just for the heck of
it, working all the problems, taking as long as I damned well pleased on each
one. And now I feel like I _am_ actually learning and retaining, partly
because I'm not rushing to meet an artificial deadline.

------
polymeth
Georgia Tech's OMSCS program addresses these issues very well in my experience
(I'm finishing my 3rd and final year). Assignments and exams follow strict
schedules, student collaboration is very strong (via Piazza, Slack, Google
Hangouts), each student receives a grade, and the cost is cheap but not
trivial (i.e. there is a financial incentive to make the most of the class.) I
am very happy with the program and feel it should serve as a model for other
institutions who want to offer MOOC like degree programs.

------
stretchwithme
Wouldn't it be cool if all the online ads you see featured topics you want to
learn? Repetition is the mother of retention.

Might be worth even if you had to pay a fee for it and take tests to set it
up. Or maybe interstitial ads could handle the testing.

Learning would be constant but not require a big time commitment. It's
integrated into your leisure activities. Nor would it be easy to set aside.

~~~
jaddood
This is a very good idea, and could be used by Google or other advertisement
agencies (if only they want to.) You may pay the revenue the ads make and get
the stuff you want to learn instead. This way, Google gets its money, and you
get to learn. Also, this could be uesful in that it doesn't require too much
tracking of the users. It is definitely not fully sustainable, but it could be
better than nothing.

------
hessproject
Many MOOCs are beginning to address the "expertise" and "other students"
issues that the article mentions.

For example, in my spare time I've been taking music production and gamedev
courses. In both cases, the courses are still at your own pace, but they
provide official ways to contact the instructors and they respond within 24
hours, and they also provide either a discord/slack channel or a facebook
group for sharing/pairing/asking questions with other students.

While I'm typically the 10% completion type of student the article mentions,
I've found both provided forms of communication to be very helpful in keeping
me motivated to work through the courses. When I get stuck on a concept I can
take a break and reach out to the instructors, and I find the ability to share
and see others music/games gives me some inspiration to continue learning and
working.

------
dougmwne
MOOCs make explicit something that has always been implicit for me about
education. In the absence of the herd, the authority figure, the degree, the
deadlines with teeth and all the other motivational tricks to get me to learn
the content, we're just left with the content itself.

Is it great content? Does it inspire my curiosity? Is it memorable? Does it
teach me things I can apply? Does it add layers of needless complexity? Is it
an exercise in abstract curriculum box-ticking? Is it an ideology in wrapping
paper?

I think the gap between 100% and the actual MOOC completion rate also
represents the gap between our ideal of education was and what it actually is.
Without all the academic window dressing, most people just learn the parts
they want. The pedagogs doth protest too much, methinks.

------
perseusprime11
7% completion rates in a 100K MOOC is still 7K students which is far greater
than any traditional brick and mortar enrollments.

~~~
clintonb
Disclaimer: I am a former engineer at edX.

Bingo! Although the completion rate was low—single digit—more students
completed the the first 6.002x offering on edX than have completed the course
at MIT in the entire history the course has been offered. As others have
mentioned, the completion rate will always be low for numerous reasons.
However, if you compare the raw number of students completing the courses, and
the costs paid by students, MOOCs come out ahead.

~~~
anonymous5133
IMO, I think we need to get over this whole idea of "completion rates".
Honestly, who cares how many students took the class. The only important
metric is how many students obtained a comprehensive understanding of the
subject after taking the course. We need side-by-side examinations to really
see which is superior.

------
Kagerjay
I think learning at your own pace is perfectly fine, so long as your okay with
mitigating / dealing with inefficiencies of roadblocks. It depends on the
topic, but I'm assuming this is towards computer science / webdevelopment in
general

Online learning is cost-effective though. You can effectively specialize in
anything computer-science based for less than $100 with all the free content /
cheap MOOC's available. Or you could attend a live seminar / webinar etc where
you can work with other people, etc. But this comes at a significantly higher
cost at a faster learning rate.

Why not take the best of both worlds? It all boils down to the best value for
the buck

1) Learn things online at your own pace, 2x speed, playback as necessary.

2) Take the extraordinate amount of money you would have spent elsewhere, use
a fraction of the cost with hackhands / make your own ad-agency for hiring
upwork specialists in issues you have. This scales indefinitely, now you
always have an expert on hand _and consequently, form a long term business
relationship with_. There's no roadblocks anymore.

3) You get on demand help onpar with in-house training / tutoring, assuming
its a popular topic. For example, learning nodejs /react. There's tons of
qualified tutors that will charge $1/minute from india/europe with hackhands
and/or similar.

4) There's always forums and or Q/A on MOOC's who have had similar issues to
you. Assuming its a popular course. Stackoverflow / reddit / etc is always
available too

5) Techmeetups and my city's dev channel has lots of great people. Also,
techtalks to explore different topics

Learning on your own effectively does require a small investment _paying for
tutors_ , but its significantly cheaper and arguably sometimes even more
efficient than learning through a program.

I know exactly what I'm getting everytime, from the comforts of my own
workarea. No wasted time driving, 2x playback speed, triple monitor
setup/mechanical keyboard, on-demand tutoring within 5 minutes, etc. I don't
have to worry about the instructor being subpar compared to what I can find
online.

------
zwayhowder
A lot of disagreement here based on the premise that "completion" is the wrong
metric. No argument there, but maybe that's not the premise.

I believe the best way is to offer options for all people. (Not going into the
proven-debunked-proven-debunked learning styles rabbit hole here).

I've tried both a Bachelors and Masters by correspondence and performed
dismally in both. I had due dates, I was financially invested but I just
couldn't get engaged with the materials. The Blackboard BBS was not even close
to a community of my peers and lecturers. (Seriously Blackboard fix that).

I'm now 2 years into a 4 year part time MBA at a university that I attend on
campus. I am engaged because I go to classes & I discuss things with both
tutors, lecturers & peers, my lecturer is a person and not doing my best and
then showing up to class is disrespectful and frankly embarrassing. I have
gone from not even submitting some assignments because <insert excuse about
life/work/busy> to a GPA that isn't perfect but is closer than I ever
expected.

I've also not finished a number of Coursera, PluralSight, Lynda and Linux
Academy courses, but I've got value from them.

Kudos to brainstation for trying to build a better platform. In the meantime
I'm working like crazy to finish my MBA before my uni follows too many others
into the world of online classes.

------
dibstern
I am highly skeptical of the research that shows low attendance causes poor
grades. I attended 2/24 lectures for one subject, and I got the highest grade
for the year, out of both semesters. And I have friends who don’t attend
lectures often and do similar.

We focus on assignments - programming & software engineering assignments eat
far too much time to get top marks and still attend classes. When I finish
assignments, I binge watch lectures and write notes like a madman.

But yeah, I really doubt the attendance studies.

~~~
topkai22
It sounded like questionable methodology- students had access to notes and
slides, but it noticeable didn’t mention videos. Professors can communicate
what they consider relatively important (and therefore what’s likely on the
test/evaluation criteria) verbally and non-verbally during lecture, which can
be captured by decent videography. If the non attending section didn’t get the
video they were not given full course information.

That being said, as others have pointed out attendance likely increases skin
in the game and results in more work in general. Another improvement across
the general population is the social aspect of class, forming study groups or
informal support structures, as well as increased attachment to material by
being part of a group in general.

While as professional I much prefer MOOCs (even if I don’t finish them) I
don’t think I would have gotten through my college curriculum without that
social context. Just too many distractions. In fact, the most common reason
for people failing out of my program was over use of video games and other
media (drug and alcohol abuse got you placed into a rehab cycle with
possibility of return). Being wanting to keep up with my known peers
definitely motivated me to work more and consume material better

------
dannykwells
I actually think there are some new models emerging that will help address
this - Springboard, for example, has learn at your own pace, but students also
have a mentor assigned to them who helps with accountability and goal setting.
From my experience the completion rate is substantially higher and students
actually learn the skill set. Insight and other data science accelerators are
opening up things like this too.

------
augbog
I feel this article doesn't understand what "learning at your own pace" means.

Yeah sure you can say "learners need this environment, this attendance, etc"
but you're falling into the trap of what we have right now -- we think we know
what's best for people to learn.

And while true for many people they definitely WILL learn with established
practices, not everyone will learn as well as they could.

~~~
anonymous5133
100% I agree with you. The student should be the final decider on what type of
course to take. From what I've seen when I ask people about MOOCs, lots of
people say they want classroom environment but when you tell them about what
if the MOOC is free. Then they all switch to MOOC because they figure they can
just hire a tutor if they really need the human help.

Most of the people I see making that argument are "education experts" who are
extremely arrogant. My prediction is they made these arguments because they
feel threatened by the potential that MOOCs have. If MOOCs become very high
quality then there is the very real threat that people will start asking if
the preference for physical classroom time still has value.

------
the_watcher
> student success is directly related to student attendance. In fact, they
> concluded that attendance is the single most important predictor of high
> grades, a better predictor than SAT scores, high school GPA, study skills or
> study habits.

This reeks of selection bias and conflating correlation with causation to me.
The abstract of the linked study does not seem to draw causal conclusions.

------
LeanderK
I never understood online-learning ([1]) for non-trivial topics. I need to
discuss stuff to really understand it and to also have fun with it! I don't
know how somebody could do a complete degree or even some harder lectures
purely by watching some videos on your computer. Having access to some smart
phd-students, talking with peers and solving hard problem-sets together is
part of the fun.

I can only imagine doing this for things like a math-light "intro to neural
networks" (my only completed MOOC and more of an tensorflow-tutorial) or
"Accounting for dummies".

EDIT: What I want to say: to me, it feels nearly impossible to learn the stuff
I learned in my more challenging lectures completely on my own with online-
videos.

[1] this feels weird as a ML-dude

~~~
j45
The issue is - online learning isn't just watching videos.

In the case of software related tasks, it's learning skills, competencies, and
building software, which is on the computer.

Digital learning is not happening, because current implementations have been
anchored in the past (recording lectures) instead of creating meaningful
digital experiences. Educators generally don't have the technology skills to
create meaningful digital learning experiences.

The technologists that can create meaningful digital learning experiences are
often not in the decision making capacity that they could be.

~~~
LeanderK
Hmm, maybe i didn't clearly communicate my opinion.

What I wanted to say is that I can't see how you could learn (without being
exceptionally dedicated) challenging topics. Things you normally go to
university for. Things where you constantly have to do difficult exercises,
where you find yourself wanting to quit, but you have to keep pushing yourself
through it. In the end, it's fun. But the path you have to travel to get there
is not (always).

~~~
EliRivers
I did a masters in maths with the OU. It was effectively eight months of full
time work, spread over five and a half years (when I started, I was thinking
about doing it in a bit under four, but once I realised how many hours just
one topic was going to take me, I had to lengthen my timetable). As you
surmise, difficult exercises and textbooks were the key; the occasional video
was good only for mining something very specific. I watched three or four
geometry videos while learning the history of geometry from Euler to
Minkowski, but geometry is particularly suited to that medium.

You say you can't see how it can be done without being exceptionally
dedicated; I don't know what counts as "exceptional dedication", but I feel
there's a context missing here. Is it expected (not necessarily by you - but
are you seeing this expectation in other people) that it's possible to learn
large amounts of difficult material without putting the time and effort in?

~~~
LeanderK
Ok, interesting. I don't think I've really reflected too much why I feel this
way before posting (hello internet!). I also may have probably over-
generalized ;)

In germany, if you study at a university, you are completely on your own.
Nobody is forcing you to do anything and you can push your exams into the next
semester until they kick you out for studying too long. So, there are some
similarities to online-lectures.

I think I have found my strategy for "getting good" at stuff:

1\. I need to be motivated: I am currently motivated that I want to understand
how machine-learning really works and can be improved. Getting exposed to
research is super fun and currently the reason why I am doing all this. What's
a good notion of generalization? What's representation-learning? etc. We have
a very active community here and I get to know many people from the industry,
academia etc. and through my research-assistant student-job I learn how they
work on stuff.

2\. Don't do it alone & and have a regular schedule: Solving hard problem-sets
together is one of the most-rewarding things I have ever done in my life. I
even try to do proofs from papers with others in my free time! But also: train
with old tests together, do the problem-sets together etc. There are a lot of
groups quickly forming during lectores or before tests that I can just join. I
don't need to do everything together, but meeting one or two times a week is
an immense boost to my dedication and everything is just way more rewarding. I
had a few lectures where I was completely on my own and it was way harder to
develop the drive I usually had.

I don't think I can really replicate this for online-courses. I'll adress the
points from above:

1\. A university is a place where there's always something interesting. So
many people studying interesting things. When I started CS, I didn't really
know what I wanted to do. The intellectual stimulus is better than I have
thought it would be. An online CS-course would probably have also thought me
about the topics, but I don't think you get to know any research groups and
their topics. I don't think this is a fundamental problem with MOOC, because
the situation can be different. But at this point in my life, it was quit
important.

2\. I think this is the deal-breaker. Reflecting on my life, I don't really do
that much completely on my own. Most of my hobbies are not something I do
alone. I also don't live alone (and I don't think I ever want to). Doing stuff
in a team is just a real Value-Multiplicator (this probably reads weird, but I
think it captures best what I mean) for me. It's not that things are not fun
to do alone ("=" 1 _fun), but they are way more fun to do in a team ( "="
x_fun for some x > 1). I don't know whether organizing local study-groups for
an online-course is really the same experience, especially if you're taking
just a few courses.

Because we are in the real world, there are always exceptions to the rule. For
example, I can program alone without any problems. I could probably program
for days without anyone bothering me. It's not that it's inherently more fun,
i really don't know why. I always get interesting ideas when I am alone and I
like to develope them (before speaking with friends about them). I also like
to read, but I haven't done this in a while. Some things are not that fun to
do in a group.

I want add that I have already completed one and finished 30% to 70% of a few
other online-lecture (some where not really interesting after a while, others
I didn't have time anymore). So I am not speaking about the entire concept.

I think I am not alone, because this is a very common pattern at my
university.

EDIT: after thinking about it: I really think that some things just don't make
that much fun alone. And that includes a lot of things I do in university.

------
bcheung
One of the things not mentioned, and maybe it is unique to my personality, is
that I often don't like the exercises given in courses and come up with my
own. If something is obvious and intuitive when hearing the concept, it is
usually enough to internalize it. But if something is vague, I like to write
some code and experiment with the concept to see how things interact.

MOOCS too often penalize you for not doing their exercises that don't always
provide that much value and don't credit you for exploring other concepts
further.

Additionally, when you have questions, office hours, message forums, Slack
channels, and external sources (youtube, other courses, blog articles) are
good sources.

~~~
alexgmcm
Yeah - but it's on the student to seek out those additional resources, just
like it is at College for students to seek out extra textbooks, use office
hours etc.

Ultimately, it just comes down to how much the student wants to learn the
material and MOOC's are just another helpful tool to do so.

------
LrnByTeach
Very well research supported points in the article.

Four things physical classroom teacher-led course offer which is often missed
in an online course are:

1\. well formulated Lesson Plans

2\. Regular Homework assignments with Timelines and Deadlines

3\. Periodic testing & grading

4\. Peer students who are a huge source of motivation and inspiration

Online courses may offer some of the above in one form or another, but not
nearly as effective as Classroom lead course as pointed in the article.

> Of course, another time-honored source of extrinsic motivation are
> deadlines.

> Course timelines and deadlines hold students accountable, spurring them to
> produce, keep up, and complete their work. In the ‘learn at your own pace’
> model, timelines and deadlines are negotiable, at best, non-existent, at
> worst.

------
the_new_guy_29
Its actually about perseverance and not some made up conclusions..

People who keep on attending classes simply have higher perseverance to
anything they do and perseverance is the most important trait determining
person success in life.

------
flattone
I wish for an online learning platform where I incur financial penalty to not
completing milestones on time.

Today... I can do whatever the hell I want 247 (effectively nothing compared
to what's possible under stricter circumstances). We could talk about self
discipline or whatever but that's a whole other objective too, so why not just
focus on root issue. Command of choices.

If for example my credit card were charged $100 every day I slide on a target?
The specific implementation is obviously up for grabs but the context has been
stated.

------
heurist
I don't think MOOCS are the solution unless utilized in schools. The role of a
school teacher working along with a MOOC would be more motivational and
disciplinary, which is what most teachers seem to specialize in anyway.
Separate the content from the distribution. Only problem is when every student
is learning exactly the same things and having no room for thinking out of the
box, but again that pretty much already happens...

Maybe even let studebs choose their own MOOCs from a list so that their
education is mostly based in interest and is self guided?

~~~
anonymous5133
IMO, I think MOOCs will be the future of education going forward. The simple
fact that a MOOC can deliver on-demand education for basically nothing on a
per-student basis is significant. You are looking at MOOCs based on what they
are now, which I agree, are generally low quality, not comprehensive and lack
sufficient tools for students to self-study. Overtime, these issues will be
worked out. New tools will be created that will allow MOOCs to deliver higher
quality of education. I could even see MOOCs being superior to classroom
education because a MOOC has the added benefit of having computer based
algorithms which could be designed to analyze student data and adapt the
course or give precise help to the student on-demand.

I think solutions could be created to solve the "lack of motivation" issue.

~~~
heurist
What solutions though? Students, especially kids, still need some kick in the
butt to actually do the work required to learn. I don't see MOOCs ever
accomplishing that unless someone somehow finds a way to make an addictive and
legitimately educational computer game that students are REQUIRED to play. Or
some medication that helps students focus and absorb information without
ruining their brains. I agree MOOCs can deliver superior quality education,
but it will be a long time before they are motiviating in their own rights.
And a lot of motivation in school comes from being near peers and having human
connection with teachers and other supervisors. MOOCs fail that requirement
almost by definition.

------
g_delgado14
Hmm brainstation, an institution that makes money off of people paying for and
attending its courses, is making the case for it's own existence. I sense no
bias here /s.

------
_yawn
I'm going to go against the grain here but just putting cameras in classrooms
and dumping that on Youtube works just fine. The content on MIT opencourseware
feels a lot nicer than things like Coursera or others even if it's more
traditional. At the end of the day you just want to communicate efficiently,
and imperfect access to information is a lot nicer than no access. Don't sweat
the details.

~~~
rlayton2
The only problem here is sound. Sound can be hard to get right, and I've
stopped watching lots of interesting "meetup recordings" on YouTube because
they just used the on-camera microphone and the audio was awful. It's a shame,
but it makes it nearly impossible to watch.

~~~
_yawn
That's very true, videos that record powerpoints are also often hard to read.

------
franzwong
I've taken an online natural language processing course. I've spent much time
on assignment because I want to get full mark. I searched the web and learnt
something extra. Due to the deadline, I missed other sessions of the course
and I couldn't take it back until the next semester. Finally I've just taken a
few sessions of the course.

------
DrNuke
MOOCs are great but a more experienced tutor is however needed for a nudge,
fruitful exchange of ideas and testing progress. The subtle aspect of
freeriding linked to not giving too much importance is maybe true for younger
or wealthy people, but everything works like that in life as well: you only
care and put the effort if you have an inner motivation.

------
alexrodriguez23
I think 'at your own pace' is great if you dedicate yourself and put in the
time. But to actually get the desired outcome, you still usually need some
sort of guidance and timeline to move along. I think this shows with a lot
MOOCs vs Lambda School.

------
Grae
These considerations are exactly why we started Thinkful and why we emphasize
expert mentorship and accountability so much.

~~~
barry-cotter
From looking over your website before and reading your reviews on coursereport
you guys look great. From a marketing perspective you need to sell your
students’ success more though. Following Austen Allred of lambdaschool.com on
Twitter is just ridiculous. Job offer, job offer, job offer, this student
tripled their annual earnings, this one quadrupled it, this one only doubled
it but he’s working remote and travelling. Why did you acquire bloc if you’re
not going to integrate the two courses?

------
quickthrower2
Probably to do with goal/habit psychology. The fittest I have been is when I
was training for a race.

------
lifeisstillgood
There are two problems with "learn on your own" (more accurate than "own
pace")

\- No-one to guide you if you misunderstand a big concept. You are just left
with a lot of reading around

\- Time. This is why so many contractors are accused of learning on the
clients time - because there is so little of your own time.

~~~
dunpeal
> No-one to guide you if you misunderstand a big concept. You are just left
> with a lot of reading around.

Good MOOCs have tests to ensure that doesn't happen. This is in fact how you
solve this problem in all large courses, even those taking place in actual
physical universities.

> Time.

That doesn't make any sense. MOOCs require minimal time investment, and are
the most flexible.

Are you saying that being forced to attend at more restrictive times would
somehow increase one's time supply?

~~~
onemoresoop
I think that should certainly help procrastinators. When there's also some
human interaction, fixed schedule, the cost, the incentive to finish up the
course is higher, even if you hate the course...

~~~
dunpeal
I agree with all that. I just disagreed with GP's claims.

------
imranq
What’s the difference between a MOOC and doing all the problems in a textbook?

------
sytelus
TLDR; MOOC model isn't working well in the sense that 90-95% of students
dropout because (1) when students gets stuck, the flounder (2) without
classroom peers there is no pressure (3) deadlines are important to keep
motivation.

------
EinsDueTresFour
My comment is merely anecdotal, I guess, but I believe if I were part of this
study my data point would have been considered a 'statistical anomaly'.

I am a career changer who moved from admin roles to software development. This
part of my life started in 2014, when I decided to make the change. My first
instinct was to get a degree, since I had never got one before, so I started
an evening presential course with a local university. During the course, I
often noticed that I wasn't taking much in from the lectures, so I'd come in
on weekends and do my study then. I'd still attend classes, as I was always
afraid I'd miss something important for the exams, but this turned out to be
rarely the case. In my last year, I was already so frustrated with spending 3
hours in class each night after a day at my full time job, that I decided to
completely skip my lectures altogether. Surprisingly, these were the modules
where I had the best performance.

There's a lot of correlation here, but in my case I'd say that what motivated
me were not the classes themselves, but the deadlines. I tried online at-your-
own-pace classes before in my previous career (accounting), and they did not
work at all. It was very hard to keep myself motivated. Again, the correlation
here does not necessarily indicate causality -- it could be argued that the
lack of motivation came from the fact that I didn't like the subject. But I
still believe that what works best for my case is to have a deadline, and
learning resources other than presential lectures.

TL;DR: career changer who tried learn-at-your-own-pace resources for previous
career path and wasn't successful. Then tried presential lectures + self study
for CS career, was moderately successful. Best results were obtained with self
study + externally imposed deadlines.

