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Comment by white-flame | Hacker News Reader

It's great that there's a central place for this, at least once it's organized sensibly.

The stupidest, most counter-productive aspect of all these MOOC systems is the artificial schedule imposed on the course. While I've been able to take a couple to completion, I've had to let some by the wayside due to scheduling. Once that happens, you're disincentivized to catch up because of being behind and those that affect scoring. When I've gone back to finish courses that I had to leave by the wayside for the moment, sometimes I've lost access to the materials because the course has shifted to its next "semester". There's absolutely no reason for that. While there are a few courses like music or writing where you are collaborating or cross-reviewing other people's work, most of them are standalone lectures, homework, and tests.

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That aspect is frustrating. I took all of Dr. Chuck's "Python for Everybody" courses, and have lost access to the videos. There have been times when I would have liked to have reviewed the videos, because while I did learn the material and perform the work at the time, I hadn't used that knowledge much in the months since. I feel as though I'm losing some of it, and would like to review. Having paid $300+ for the courses, I don't feel I should have lost access to the materials.

My wife works with Dr. Chuck and helps produce the university of michigan's coursera videos. She says you should absolutely still have access to those videos, and if you don't you should contact Coursera's support.

If you paid for it on the old Spark platform (over a year ago) those classes were migrated to their new system so you might need to resign up, but you shouldn't need to repay. The URL to use for requesting is: http://learner.coursera.help

This seems to be what was indicated in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11881767

I was under the impression that would remove access to old courses by June 30 for those who hadn't paid. Removing access for those who've paid goes too far.

this is why i always (try to) work out a way of downloading an offline copy of the videos/course notes.

> and have lost access to the videos.

One thing I like about Udemy (disclaimer: I work there) is the lifetime access policy for premium content.

So true. One of the worst aspects of school is the imposition of a uniform schedule on everyone. There is a point beyond which learning faster means learning more shallowly. You don't have time to develop a rich mental model, which you test, explore, edit, and integrate with related models, but have to settle for a less refined model. With even less time, you have to resort to memorizing parts you don't have time to figure out to parrot back on a test. The less time, the more you have to rely on memory of isolated facts and general-purpose logic to "just pass the test".

It is tragically common for people (esp. kids) who would be fully capable of understanding the material to be hustled along at a pace that is determined by factors unrelated to their personal needs, forcing them into less-effective learning modes.

These artificially time-limited MOOCs potentially turn us all into such kids. If I'm trying to learn something for which my preparation was 20 years ago, I'll be as good as anyone after I finish the course, but I need more time to do it correctly. If I'm trying to learn something but only have an hour a week to allocate to it, it's my turn to be the "slow learner", but given the necessary time, I'll know the material as well as the fastest learner by the time I finish.

But MOOCs impose a schedule unrelated to my individual circumstances, and I can take it or leave it. It would be so much better if they just told me what to read, and whenever I finished reading, I could watch the corresponding video lecture, then I could go to an open, ongoing forum to read the accumulating Q&A for that lecture and post my own questions or comments, then on to the problem sets with answers and discussion again on the forum, followed by quizzes and tests (multiple versions of each, so I could take them, repeatedly if necessary, for my own guidance, not grades)...and I could plow through it all in a week or chip away at it for a year, as suited my needs.

If they wanted to offer credentials, they could separate the teaching from the ultimate certification testing.

As it is, in most cases a good textbook still meets my needs so much better than all this advanced teaching technology.

In addition to that, I've been disappointed that community building is based around courses and not forms of study. So if you go to a course after it's ended, the forum is dead. It would make sense to have forums/communities set up around specific fields of study, with specific course forums that stay up between sessions (so the forum for a Calc II class wouldn't keep being recreated every time the schedule flips over).

Also when they take a 1-hour lecture and split it into 5-minute segments, makes it so tedious. I much prefer OCW's approach.

Precisely. Not all of us suffer from ADHD! I simply abhor this new trend of mini-videos - all it does is break up my flow.

As someone with ADHD, I can assure you that splitting up videos into 5 minute chunks does me no favours whatsoever.

OCW does have some of the 5-minute segments approach if you access it through the MIT website (for some courses at least).

However, OCW coupled with Youtube 1.5x playback is heaven.

Coursera actually has a solution to this and it involves rolling over from your enrolled session in to a later one.

To tell you the truth, I find it a great system because it gives me a sense of the time frame I should realistically be completed the course.

Although, at the same time I tend to do deep dives on a course and complete them as fast as possible blowing past the schedule anyways.

If you don't want to subscribe to a self-imposed schedule the audit option basically allows you to learn the material on your own time.

Yes and some of the data science courses seem to be offered weekly, at minimum monthly. At least the courses I took.

Something that annoys me is courses that are listed in the course list but were once and done and never coming back, or "maybe someday" classes.

The time limit is enforced discipline. It's arguably their main benefit. Some people study without an online course... most don't.

I don't have data on completion data on timed vs untimed courses. The former's popularity is suggestive, but confounded by marketing, more people online, prestige, packaging of courses, lecturer/tutor availability, cohort forum, etc.

But I do have one anecdatum: I took Ullman's Automata, even though all the lectures were already on youtube, and slides, tests and solutions on his homepage. I found the schedule very tough towards the end... I meant to later review some parts I needed more time on, but over a year later, I still haven't...

The stupidest, most counter-productive aspect of all these MOOC systems is the artificial schedule imposed on the course.

I think that comes from imitating "physical" courses, which are designed to be completed in a predetermined amount of time. As the sibling comment alludes to, it also gives some motivation for actually finishing them.

Also you get community going through the course at the same time, can be useful for assignments where you grade each other's work, group projects, discussion boards, etc.

But even for the meatspace courses in our uni, the course materials (lecture notes and exercise pdfs) remain available on the public course web page to the foreseeable future after the course.

Having predetermined time schedule might be reasonable for stuff like course credit and motivating the students to complete the course on time, but killing the forum community and even restricting access to materials (or making the access an unnecessary hassle) seems very unnecessary if the objective really is to foster learning in general.

Does anybody know the reason why MOOCs impose these artificial schedule?s

Aren't these MOOCs just largely loss leaders for the schools?

If memory servers me right, Andrew Ng from Coursera said that there's a stark difference in test completion with and without deadlines. Apparently, if you don't have a hard deadline it's quite easy to just let it slip, because you can always do it later.

I don't think that a schedule is counter-productive because for most people, if you don't accomplish the course in a certain schedule, you would have to start over because you would forget most things... but of course all material should stay available forever in an ideal world.

The schedule can be an issue for those of us with travel and other real life concerns. OTOH, I wonder if what you want is purely self-paced learning why YouTube videos plus a book/website don't fit the bill.

For a narrow set of classes, programming autograders and other online aids are probably useful. But then, to the degree people have issues, they're really on their own (absent an explicit "TA" model that you pay for).

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