Every time one of these new “MOOCish” sites pops up I do my best to play around with the tool before being too hypercritical. Last year when AI Class was all the rage I signed up and managed to make it an entire week I think. The problem there of course was that learning about artificial intelligence was way beyond the scope of what I was both interested in and probably capable of in just a few short weeks. That’s not to say there weren’t other problems with their tool like downtime, low engagement, and lack of community, but ultimately I think my disinterest for the subject played a larger role in “dropping out”.
Coursera has received a lot of buzz lately because several institutions of signed on to offer courses in it and they’re trying to expand beyond the geeky computer science topics with a high barrier to entry. After browsing the list and talking to Jim who was interested in playing with it we decided to go with Internet History, Technology, and Security which is being taught right now by Chuck Severance aka “Dr. Chuck”. Unfortunately it appears I’ve started to drop off and with the start of the semester I can see the writing on the wall of where this is going. So I wanted to reflect a bit on my experience so far and what I’m feeling.
The Tool
First let’s talk about Coursera as a platform. The very first impression I got (and I think many will) is that this is very much akin to Blackboard, Moodle, or any other learning management system. I don’t say that in a bad way, just remarking that the design of the site *has* to have been intentional. Perhaps it’s to make current or former students and faculty feel comfortable in there (“Oh, this is just like when I was in school.”). Perhaps it’s a lack of imagination to think differently about the structure of the content (though I doubt this is the case).
Another aspect of the tool is the video player, which you get to know quite well as most of the content is delivered via video. The player is not bad. They’ve made it HTML5 compliant and added an option to speed up or slow down the video on the fly which is nice. I rarely had problems with it loading. However I did very much wish it would have remembered the state of where I was in a video. The player also delivers quiz type questions during the video that you have to answer to continue (Dr. Chuck didn’t actually grade these, they were just for your own personal learning/understanding). I found these quite jarring and pretty annoying. In some cases the question came immediately after someone said the answer and I felt like they were testing to see if I had a pulse or not. Given these did not “count” towards anything I would have liked the option to disable them or move them all to the end of the video.
The discussion forums are completely uninspired. It’s as if someone said “We’ve got to add something to give a sense of community.” and they decided since it already looked like an LMS that a forum made sense. Although community is really what I desired, I did not go there because a forum is about as uninteresting as it gets.
Peer assessment was another tool we used in the course. It allows you to submit a paper and then after the submission deadline there’s a period where you grade other student’s work against a rubric and leave comments. The tool is an interesting idea that falls apart when you consider how many people (like me) were in the midst of dropping off completely. I did my paper and submitted it, but I was supposed to grade 5 other papers (!) presumably to make up for those that wouldn’t do the grading at all. I only made time to grade 1 and meanwhile I never received any feedback on my own paper.
One last thing on the tool is that I wished for better notifications. I got emails on some things from Dr. Chuck but nothing from Coursera about deadlines or reminders. No notifications on anything. This is one thing I think Canvas does really well, you can get Twitter or Facebook notifications, email notifications, all defined by you the student. If I’m to stay engaged I need to know what’s happening, I need that nudge.
The Content
I don’t want to spend a lot of time talking about the content because I imagine every class is different and a lot depends on the instructor. For what it’s worth I thought Dr. Chuck did an excellent job curating source video for us to watch and even when he was lecturing it was well produced. I have heard criticism from others that the same is not true for other courses.
For much of the course I felt like a bystander. Here I was watching a set of videos chosen by my professor. I may or may not have a quiz at the end of the week to gauge my learning. The videos were interesting, but I left feeling like I hadn’t participated. This stands in stark contrast to ds106 where I constantly felt that pull to create and interact alongside the other participants. I can’t tell you the name of a single other person that was in this course and it started with over 40,000. I think that’s a shame and something they could improve on.
I’ll close by saying I also take responsibility all on my own for dropping out, withdrawing, failing, whatever you want to call it. Participation in anything takes a commitment of time and dedication and there were plenty of times I briefly thought “I should log in and do that work.” and did not. I can’t say for certain if it was because of the length of the videos, or the fact that “the work” was just watching videos instead of reading or interacting. I simply didn’t want to spend my time watching videos on a site to receive a virtual certificate saying I had completed the work.
I hope Coursera continues to improve on their platform and offer better ways for instructors to engage their students as well as better ways for the students themselves to interact with each other. I believe tools like Coursera can be very powerful for developing countries where access to learning on this level is a privilege and they should be commended for trying to tackle these hard problems. I’ll continue to watch this space and who knows what tool I’ll be using to fail my next class!
I took the Internet History course myself and I was just completely overwhelmed by the sheer amount of content I had to consume in such a short period of time, not to mention the work that stacked up quickly and I had to run for the sake of my sanity.
I was also very much interested in the Fantasy/Sci-Fi course, but I had to abandon that too because of the amount of video content I had to watch, the (admittedly short) essay I had to write on a weekly basis, AND grading 4 of my peers’ papers? Even my upper-division college courses in my brick-and-stone four year public liberal arts college weren’t this demanding, and those actually had grade weight!
Coursera needs a LOT of work if they’re going to have this as a viable model.
I’m taking the Internet History Course, too. Although I’m close to falling off, I haven’t yet.
My perspective is a bit different. I think you’re being way too generous. I’ve taught online for over ten years. I’ve used Moodle, BB, Angel, D2L, rolled-my-own, WordPress, and played with Sakai. Coursera is extremely disappointing. It’s at least 5-6 yrs behind. It’s not thought through. The video player stuff doesn’t handle Android well – kind of amazing for an outfit started in Silicon Valley by computer geeks & VC’s. It’s clearly not capable of doing the heavy lifting for a real college course.
I was also extremely disappointed with the content. The syllabus is a joke. There’s no plan, no objectives, no learning outcomes. It’s all just sit and listen to drchuck ramble in stream-of-consciousness. I’ve never know what I’m supposed to be looking for or concluding or analyzing. It would never pass muster in my department.
The peer graded essay assignment and rubric was 9th grade level at best.
I also have the perspective of having lived the same time period (longer really) as drchuck, only in the private sector corporate world of IT and networking. The course really leaves out a lot of stuff that was critical to evolution of Internet.
Then again, these people are learning how to do this, on the fly. I would anticipate a lthe design of the forums etc. will be adapted and will evolve as will the little tweaks like reminders re: assignments. It is all just a bigger discussion about what the drive is to learn and why someone would do it, if the reward is intrinsic, rather then external (i.e. the credit that gets you somewhere you are trying to go.) I often think of my late mother who would have been just so delighted to have had this opportunity, for free to take university level courses that she had no opportunity to take. She would be in her 80′s now if she were here. She was a life long learner, read voraciously and was always learning. She would have been like a kid in a candy shop in her retirement, had this been available. I expect there are many out there that this is still the case. I’ve had ample opportunity for education but look at this course as some of the information I might pick up in a magazine and read. Yes, I’m not applying it (so far), I’m not being asked to think critically about it and communicate that much, but I’m learning something, nonetheless. It is fascination to watch this evolution, as we are in definitely in a shift and no one can anticipate where it will lead yet, really. As the course content illustrates, innovations can have unintended results that can change society.
@ECONPROPH,
How do you really feel? Awesome.
@Donna,
I think the problem with Coursera in relationship to what you are saying is that Coursera misses the kid and the candyshop. They have the ability to make the information interesting and compelling for a community and they aren’t doing it. The tools should be focusing on sharing what we know about any of this not turning the process into an isolated island of “going to work” to do a course. It isn’t engaging any community.
I made it through a week of Internet History. DS106 was a lot like playing. It was fun. I could spend hours watching the camp videos, reading other students’ blogs, and working on projects. I never noticed where the time went with DS106. Internet History definitely didn’t have the same feel. It definitely wasn’t playful. Other things competing for my time won out.
@ Tim: You mentioned about receiving a virtual certificate on the completion of the work. Does it mean after you complete the whole course, you only get a virtual certificate or does it apply on weekly assignments/ projects? What good is it going to do if we get virtual certifications? We would be showing off print-outs of the certificates as a proof, I guess! I will drop off the courses if that’s the case. Waiting for your reply. Thanks.
I was referring to the fact that no Coursera courses count as “credit” for anything and in fact no certificate is issued for the course. Dr. Chuck has committed to sending out a PDF certificate of completion to students, but the point is obviously that if you take one of these courses you don’t do it for any real recognition or reward, it’s basically a virtual high-five for the effort.
Obviously someone who casually takes courses to criticize them does not get Coursera. I want to learn something without a whole bunch of associated rules (I’m currently researching DBA programs to take advantage of my incredible post 911 gi-bill but navigating these bureaucracies is tiresome). Coursera allows me to do what college classes and maybe now even online courses are supposed to do, allow me to have some fun and learn something. I feel fortunate to learn from Dr Chuck…..he understand the value of coursera and will continue to help the COMMUNITY of under served individuals already understand.
Stephanie,
I am currently looking at using my G.I. Bill for something like Coursera. Where you able to use the g.i. bill for this?
Thanks,
Dustin
@ Tim: Okay, well keep this certificate thing aside. Are any of the courses including Dr. Chuck’s worth studying? Do we even benefit from these? What would you suggest? I have registered for 4 courses. Now, I doubt if any of that hard work is going to pay off or help me in job or something. Your whole article is detailed and very helpful, but still I had these questions. Hope, I am not taking too much of your time!
I suppose it depends on what you’re looking for. Most employers right now will not see Coursera courses as “real certification or experience”. Maybe this will change years from now, but at the moment I think the real value from Coursera is simply access to courses for free that normally you would not have. It’s a personal learning thing for now. Whether it becomes an actual certification or degree-granting entity in the future is right now unknown.
of course the certificate can’t be a “certificate”. but about the participation in class and forums i think that more depends on the course, the lecturer of the course as well as students. I’ve taken logic, machine learning, and sociology courses there; and the activity i saw in sociology’s forum i’ve never seen in any other one. Students there were introduced with topics by the lecturer in the video to discuss about in the forum and they were really discussing. But i never saw any such activities in logic or ML courses.
[...] fewer students completed the peer grading assignment than tend to complete the quizzes, e.g. see Tim Owens’ ‘Failing Coursera’ post and discussion; also this article with Dr. Chuck confirms a drop in student numbers completing peer grading). I [...]
Model Thinking and Gamification have been interesting just as something new to learn. Today is not a good example as the site appears to have been down for several hours.
Just wanted to say, that everything you say bad about coursera, it is not true, except the platform, and that is your own opinion, some people might like it. About the hard work, time and so on, you can’t complain that it is coursera bad job, it is just a platform. You have to conplain to professors not to coursera. Coursera did a great job for people who want self-education. The courses are different topic.
Dodger- A lot of students at UM sign up for Prof Rabkin’s courses, thinking they can get easy credit for reading science fiction and fantasy books. Nothing could be further from the truth.
How do you withdraw from a course?
Not sure since I haven\’t taken one since this post.
Now that coursera has been up awhile, I’m wondering if anyone has taken a course through them that was actually any good, I’ve tried about 10 different courses, and without fail, they were all pretty awful. It’s not the site that’s the issue but the content put together by the professors. It can be dumbed down to the point of uselessness, or just be a lot of difficult minutiae with no overarching theme, or … well, the list goes on. And the embedded quizzes are pretty spotty. Occasionally there’s a good quiz that makes one think, but more often the quiz asks a question that is only answered AFTER the quiz — and there was no way of knowing the info beforehand.
Basically, the only courses where I could understand what was happening were the ones where I already pretty much knew the content. And since I already knew what they were supposed to be teaching, the low quality teaching was even more evident. I’ve been perusing a number of course in hopes of finding some I can recommend for students, but so far I’m not coming up with anything.
I don’t know if I’ve had extremely bad luck picking courses or if the site just invites this sort of thing. Perhaps the good teachers are too busy teaching traditional courses? The professors here know they’re not going to get any feedback so they don’t even try? It’s hard to tell.
It’s not the online-ness of it that is the problem. I’ve been having good luck with places like Thinkwell and Udacity.
Truth be told, I’ve found the forums on coursera to be much more informative than the actual classes. I get the feeling some of the students know more than the professors, or are better able to impart their knowledge.
But if anyone can recommend a course on coursera that’s actually worth spending the time on, I’d be interested.
Well, I took “Internet History, Technology, and Security”, it has given be a better understanding on the tech. As it is mentioned in this forum, the developing country like India [ where i live ] all the students may not get good lectures. There are excellent Professors, but reaching them is the problem. So “Coursera” is a Open Gift.
# The Topics are attractive and current
# It gives “a strong base” about the topic, which gives a foundation to learn further
# The “subtitles” on the video are very useful
# links are useful
# Not all the “lectures” are good.
# Some “quiz” questions are meaning-less
# The assignment time limit is too short. [ for me ]
Being a school Teacher, i wanted to learn continuously, motivated me to register for many courses at a time. However, I am unable to follow all the courses concurrently, Assignments are incomplete and skipping quizzes. But, Coursera is very useful, triggers me learn.
So, My Opinion is ” Coursera is another helping hand for Learners”
The author of this article had a bad attitude from the beginning. Coursera is an answered prayer for those of us who really want/need to learn. Learning doesn’t have to be exciting and fun. Coursera isn’t a game website, it’s a place to hone skills that will help me be better at my job. Studying on Coursera is like eating broccoli or lifting weights; it’s not something most people would consider fun, but it is good for those of us who do it!
@ellie,
I’ve by and far found the courses to be very good; my problem is that my appetite exceeds the time I have to put into it.
For example, the functional progamming in Scala course is done by the inventor of the Scala language. It follows the seminal MIT undergraduate text The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs.
Dan Grossman is teaching an excellent course, Programming Language. It gives you exposure to functional programming with static and dynamic typing, and object oriented, dynamic typing. Pretty much all the tools you need to approach the major different approaches to language. As a lecturer he is very clear.
For algorithms we have a couple of great choices. Segdwick, who literally wrote the book on algorithms, teaches both practical courses on algorithms (how to implement and use them), and theoretical courses on proving properties about algorithms (he has made major contributions to the field, so it is especially nice to have the course taught by him). Alternatively, we have the excellent Tim Roughgarden teaching an excellent algorithms course from Stanford. I find his teaching style to be very precise and engaging.
The Control of Mobile Robots gives a great introduction to control theory.
J. Nathan Kutz teaches a few different math courses; Scientific Computing and Computational Methods for Data Analysis. I found myself wishing that more of my professors in college were as good at teaching as him. He takes some fairly challenging material and made it very clear to me; he develops the ideas in a way that seem very obvious and clear. In other presentations of the same ideas I find myself going ‘huh’?
These are professors from top Universities, with stellar reputations, teaching real courses in a classroom, and sharing the material with us online. Suggesting that it is the bad professors is kind of shocking to me.
I have also had bad courses. One was taught by the inventor of the field. I counted 27 ‘ums’ in one minute. I think he might have had a speech impediment, because there was some stuttering as well. I don’t fault him for that, but the videos were unwatchable by me. Another course was taught by somebody for who English was not the first language, and I found it impossible to interpret the meaning of the questions in the quizzes. The material was good, but I couldn’t really understand what was being asked. Some professors and their TAs do not interact with you at all in the forums, leaving you to flounder; in another course I have had the instructor type out two long explanations to a misapprehension I had in the very first week. In another the professor was not particularly active, but his TAs were extremely helpful and proactive.
All in all I am extraordinarily pleased with Coursera. I find myself wishing for more breadth (for example, I am longing for an abstract algebra course, and have resorted to one recorded in 2003 at Harvard). Great Universities, and world renowned researchers are giving significant amounts of their time away for free.
I’ve been a self-motivated learner all my life. Having something like coursera is a dream come true for me. I know people at work that sit around and complain about how they don’t know about X or Y, and have a litany of excuses of why they haven’t learned it. Learning takes work. We are not trying to acquire facts, but knowledge – how to apply and use our facts. Not every quiz is perfect, but Coursera is spending a lot of time analyzing the results of these courses. It will continue to improve. With the exception of the two language issues I mentioned, every course has left me feeling that there was a lot more to extract from the course, if I just had more time. Fortunately you still have access to the materials after the course is completed, so you can revisit in your own time (absent the support in the forums).