Coursera has a few self-paced classes. I've signed up for a few, and I've never come close to completing one. On the other hand, I've completed a few courses with a strict time schedule.
I think they've tested the self-paced idea out and found it just doesn't work as well under the circumstances.
Conversely, I've never managed to complete a Coursera course that was on a schedule. And I've failed more university course than I should have, for the same reason. I'll usually buy textbooks on my own and combine them with online resources to learn on my own time, and this has worked out better than almost any class I've attended.
The only exception to that is when professors took special note and allowed me to work differently. I once had a Java professor that instead of working through the weekly goals and quizzes, allowed me to pick a large project to work on over the course of the semester, and he would give me goals from the regular syllabus that I had to meet, but they weren't part of any strict schedule like the other students. Things like polymorphism, using an SQL database to store data, etc. I ended up making a tool for managing player stats and notes for a D&D campaign. It was both the most fun, and most informative course I'd ever taken. However, I understand it is unreasonable to expect a professor to split their time and attention in such a way. Especially if every student wants to pursue their own individual learning style.
Courses with a strict schedule are obviously effective for teaching a majority of people. But that doesn't mean it works for everybody, or even that it is the most effective method for that majority of people. I'm very excited to see an institution try out an alternative way of structured learning.
I totally agree. To me, one of the advantages of these online classes is that they usually impose some kind of pace. It's something difficult to enforce when self-studying. Otherwise, I may as well read a book which I think is a better format than a video.
The problem, at least for me, is that there's no real incentive to get a "good grade" in those courses. I can't imagine one single employer actually caring that someone has an actual coursera course completion letter.
So when I do those time sensitive classes, if life gets a bit busy and I can't keep up, I'll just skip that week. And then of course I'm kind of screwed as I likely don't have time to do 2x the coursework the following week and it snowballs.
If instead it was self-paced I could go ahead of pace at will and behind pace at will. If I fell behind pace there I can still complete it AOK.
And perhaps this is just me, but for some reason once I fall behind in the time sensitive classes I rarely manage to complete it on my own time. There's something subconsciously working on me with the time schedules such that I throw my hands up and say screw it.
Self-pacing or very loose pacing also much makes any sort of discussion board or peer to peer interactions pretty much useless. Discussion boards have pretty horrible S/N ratios and other problems under the best of circumstances but with self-pacing you almost might as well not have them.
And then, as you say, for a lot of topics it's then worth asking exactly what function the MOOC is serving that isn't served equally well or better in many cases than an appropriate book.
That's a good point and it touches on some of the intangibles that universities provide. OTOH, just emulating a university is probably not the best solution. Self pacing has a lot of advantages and it would be great if commitment devices worked on those too.
I think both self-pacing and and scheduled courses have their own advantages. For a self-pacing course, it's more flexible to learn, but it might also be too flexible so that students cannot finish it. And the forums for those self-paced courses are just like a ghost town. On the other hands, a scheduled course with some due dates make all the students in the same rate of progress. It might have more interaction between students. It definitely helps if online students can have some interactions. Also, under the stress of the due dates, students might have more motivations to finish those assignments.
I used to sign up many courses online (Coursera, Udacity, eDX, Code School, Treehouse, etc ... ) but finish few of them. I'm now trying to hold some small study groups (3-5 people) and see whether we have higher probabilities to finish those courses or not. In my experience, social power is unlimited.
I think they've tested the self-paced idea out and found it just doesn't work as well under the circumstances.