In Part 1 I talked about the actual structure of MOOCs, and this post will be more of my personal opinion about MOOCs.
What I really like about MOOCs:
They provide a necessary structure for learning. I remember with fondness the days when my life was so slow that I could make my own study schedule and just do it. I’d decide to study ancient Rome and dedicate the required time to it, and then somehow do it, at least most of the time. Now that’s a lot harder. Life seems to get in the way, haha. I don’t have as much time and it is more difficult to stay accountable. So MOOCs are at once flexible and structured. If I decide the class isn’t helpful or if I truly don’t have time, I can just drop it. But if I decide to stay in the class, then the deadlines and requirements keep me accountable.
There are MOOCs on a huge variety of subjects, and give me an introduction to ideas that I may not have encountered on my own. I like that I am learning from a professor, typically an renowned expert in their field, rather than just finding my own way through a subject. The course on The Ancient Greek Hero was taught by Gregory Nagy, a leading researcher in Greek literature. The translations we received for the course were at least partially translated by Professor Nagy himself, and he would mention how he spent 10 years wondering how to translate a specific phrase. He would quote a passage in the original Greek, then share the different translations he’d developed. The course on Soren Kierkegaard was taught by Jon Stewart, an associate professor at the University of Copenhagen’s Soren Kierkegaard Research Center. The Modern and Postmodern Philosophy course was taught by Michael Roth, the president of Wesleyan University. So I mention these examples to say that I enjoy being able to learn from the very best professors. Yes, I’m missing out on personal interaction by not being at a college, but then again I wouldn’t be able to learn from all these teachers at a single university.
What I don’t like:
Sometimes the content of MOOCs is very shallow. I’ve dropped out of a few classes because I was learning absolutely nothing new. For instance, one class had 15 minutes worth of lectures each week. 15 minutes. Come on, that’s just not enough. That’s an introduction, not a week’s worth of material. So perhaps these courses have their place and are useful in some situations, but they can be frustrating when I want to get into the details of a subject. That’s why I try to find longer courses, such as 8-12 weeks, because those ones have more depth .
The online networking and interaction that everyone seems to rave about with MOOCs simply doesn’t work for me. I’ve tried to get involved in the forums and facebook pages, but for some reason I can’t get into it. I think the massiveness of the classes is intimidating even online. It feels like there are 500 conversations going on, and I don’t know where to even begin. People also tend to drop common courtesy that you’d expect in a real conversation, so there can be some really nasty and unkind comments. Threads quickly escalate from friendly disagreement to personal attacks. So while I plan to keep trying, this is one aspect of the MOOCs that I have not been able to appreciate as of yet.
What I’m not sure about:
Several of the MOOCs from last semester included peer review essay assignments. The students are provided with a grading rubric and then asked to anonymously grade 3-5 essays from other classmates. The grading can get tedious, especially since there are some really horrible essays (or ramblings of random words, with no punctuation, pretending to be essays) but it did give me good practice in analyzing a work and trying to think of positive and critical feedback to give. Also, I think the benefit of being peer-reviewed is that it forces you to write for a general audience. Rather than writing something that only a professor would understand, I had to think about how average people would understand and interpret my work. I think it helped me simplify, condense, and stay away from grand sounding phrases with little content. On the other hand, peers are not experts, so I think it is a little off to expect an average person to have the skills to accurately judge an essay’s quality. You are also trusting that your peers care about the grading and are trying their best to understand your work.
The future of MOOCs:
There are some serious obstacles for MOOCs to work through. One is the question of certification. Many people don’t feel it is useful to take a class that is not accredited. I suspect we’ll be seeing more variations on the verified certificate that Coursera offers now as an attempt to give people a better incentive. I also think there will be efforts to overcome the lack of student-professor interaction. People would probably be willing to pay a fee to have access to the professor on a personal level. So there might be different levels of MOOCs, the completely free version and then the paid version which gives more benefits, such as interaction with the professor. I also hope they find a way to overcome the chaos of the student-to-student interaction, such as breaking down the MOOC into smaller study groups or something.
I think the most encouraging aspect of MOOCs is that they are providing even more options for education. There’s no longer only one way to learn. I don’t think MOOCs will replace colleges or traditional learning, but giving students many ways to pursue their education is really fantastic. Because it doesn’t matter so much whether education is conventional or unorthodox, what matters is the freedom for individuals to learn however they want. And that’s what MOOCs are doing.
