The fact that you're here discussing this matter indicates that you're not 'average'. You probably don't associate with many 'average' college students.
That may be true, but that's not what I was trying to get at. My observation is that the external motivating pressures are the same, whether the material is delivered via traditional instruction or online. In both environments, there are lectures to attend, assignments or essays to hand in, and a final exam to write. I suspect that anyone who has enough motivation to complete that work in a traditional setting would also be able to complete it online.
I strongly disagree. I have three college degrees but my completion rate on MOOCs is hovering around 10% right now. Obviously I'm a sample of one, but I just wanted to give a personal account to match your own.
The classroom setting is important because it sets up social expectations and accountability. I tend to blow off MOOCs partly (there are obviously other reasons as well, including the fact that they are free) because there is no scheduled time. There is less pressure and it is up to me to make time, it isn't blocked out for me. I also get bored more easily in MOOCs because the communication only flows in one direction, from the teacher to the student. I can't ask questions or challenge assumptions during lectures. To me, that isn't as interesting, so I'm more likely to drop out.
Interesting! I don't have any college degree - I left in fourth year and joined a startup. I mostly hated college classes. I felt that many instructors either didn't want to be teaching, or weren't very good at it, and didn't work at getting better. Taking a class on a subject I was interested in was a guaranteed way to destroy all my enthusiasm for the topic (with the one exception of a great computer graphics course). I couldn't imagine completing three degrees.
My MOOC completion rate is also fairly low. In total I've signed up for 16 MOOCs, and successfully completed 6 of them (with 1 more in progress). I don't consider this a failing of the MOOC style - I actually consider the freedom to drop courses without punishment a great joy compared to my previous college engineering degree program. I've stopped "attending" MOOCs because I didn't like the instructor, or because I didn't enjoy the material, or just because I had too many other things going on to set aside 6 hours a week to work on a course.
But what if you had to complete the MOOC in a college environment, where you didn't have the freedom to just stop working on the material without punishment? I agree that having the lecture times blocked out is a motivating factor - I take "classes" at the gym to motivate myself to go every day. But when it comes to assignments, or studying for the final, that's still time you need to set up for yourself. Since you've been so successful at self-motivating yourself to do that already, do you think you'd be able to motivate yourself enough to watch the video lectures in a college setting?
Thanks for sharing your data point, even if it's just a small sample size. I'm really enjoying reading about other's experiences.
I actually took a for-credit online class last year and I did rather poorly in it, at least by my normal standards. There were several problems. First, I didn't find the material very interesting (it didn't cover what I thought it was going to cover).
But second, and maybe just as important, I just hated watching the video lectures. I had a lot of trouble motivating myself to spend several hours watching lectures, and when I did watch them I often found I got very little out of them because I couldn't ask questions in real time. So, for instance, if I wasn't completely clear on a point in minute 10, I might be lost for the next 40 minutes and my only recourse was to watch the part that confused me over and over again in the hope that it would become clear (which is boring).
I think I simply can't learn well from video lectures. When I was in school I was the type of student who would always engage the lecturer. I asked a lot of questions, sometimes when I was confused, sometimes when I wanted more information, and sometimes when I thought I had something to add or wanted to know about some special case. This just doesn't work with video lectures.
So I think the answer to your question is that I probably wouldn't do very well in a MOOC, even if there was some kind of consequence behind it.
Edit: I do think that MOOCs are a great thing and I hope they stay a part of the "scene", partly because it is nice to have the option (I enjoy participating in them even if I usually don't get very far), but mostly because they seem to "work" for a lot of people, like yourself. More options is good, just don't take away my in-person lectures! :)
Something I see overlooked is that it's not an apples-to-apples comparison. If you were getting real academic credits for participating in MOOCs, if your degree completion depended on successful completion of a MOOC, I'd wager that your completion rate would hover somewhat north of 10%.
It's also overlooked that most college courses look more like MOOCS than not. Much ado is made about the importance of teacher intervention for struggling or marginal students. Is anyone under the impression that such interventions actually happen at scale (or at all) at your typical large university? Especially the lousy ones most directly threatened by MOOCs?
