Comment by hanjiexi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hanjiexi | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I'm one of the maintainers of the curriculum.

> I have kind of grown to dislike a lot of these "learn programming on your own!" things/bootcamps/courses.

I somewhat agree, though I don't really see the problem with "learn to code" style programs if learning to code is precisely your goal. What I don't like is the seemingly widespread belief that learning to code is equivalent to learning computer science, when computer science doesn't even have anything to do with computers (as specific pieces of hardware). OSSU/CS is not a "learn to code" program; it mixes coding with computer science, and it's expected that it would take years for someone to get through the whole list of resources.

The second thing I believe I agree with you about is that we reject "learn programming on your own". While many people are interesting in starting to learn something on their own, drop off rates are extremely high for MOOCs. Most people cannot learn things on their own, and most MOOCs fail to provide the support needed by students. That's why OSSU is a community of learners that support each other, not just a curriculum.

> a lot of the "extra" classes you're required to take actually do inform your perspective on a lot of career stuff. For example, I hated taking philosophy classes and thought they were "pointless", but I recently realized how much they have helped me with logical thinking, and being able to justify decisions I'm forced to make.

I totally agree with this, except for the fact that I loved my philosophy courses in college :-)

OSSU/CS, at least in its current state, is not a replacement for a well-rounded education. Since we are not an institution, we do not have any general education requirements. It would be better to think of OSSU/CS as a resource that someone with a bachelor's degree outside of CS might use before applying to grad school in CS, particularly to avoid taking expensive remedial classes. That is exactly how I'm using it myself. We also have people already enrolled in a CS program at a formal institution, but still using OSSU/CS to get a different perspective on the same topics.

> drop off rates are extremely high for MOOCs.

I see this statistic tossed around quite a lot.

Maybe it's because many MOOCs require you (or at least urge you) to login and officially "enroll" in their course to see the content.

Many times I've been just looking around a MOOC out of curiosity, but I'm required to "enroll" in it in order to see the material. So I login, "enroll", take a quick look at the content and forget about it.

It's not necessarily a fault of the MOOC format.

Very true! I think all educational material should be openly accessible without login, and that enrollment should be something entirely separate and optional.

Just a note, I realize that I came off as overly-hostile towards OSSU; not my intention, I don't know anything about it and I apologize if I gave the impression that I was criticizing it specifically.

> I somewhat agree, though I don't really see the problem with "learn to code" style programs if learning to code is precisely your goal.

I agree; nothing wrong with learning to code if you just want to learn to code. I get a little frustrated that a certain subset of people treat these MOOCs as a replacement or alternative to college.

MOOC drop out rates are a fiction.

For example, I do some teaching and occasionally I will "enroll" in 5+ MOOCs (i.e. every MOOC covering the same or ismilar subject) because I want to see how each of them presents a particular tiny concept - because I can't see what is in their lecture 4 slides 10-12 without "enrolling" and subsequently "dropping out".

Citation needed. It is a big stretch to go from "some percentage of enrollees are just browsing" to "MOOC drop out rates are a fiction". The research that's been done on this shows that even if we adopt a much more narrow definition of enrollee, the completion rate is still very low. For example, in one study[0], "enrollees" were defined as those who answered at least one question right on the first quiz, and only 1/4 of those people finished the whole course.

25% is better than 3%, but both are very low compared to estimates of on-campus completion rates, for which I've heard numbers ranging from ~50% to ~65%.

[0]: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/03/08/researchers-e...

I'm not claiming that the rates aren't much lower than on-campus completion rates, that seems quite reasonable, but my point is that it's useless to base any decisions of the official "dropout rates" since if the true rate is (as in your example) 25% then the 3% rate is quite literally fiction.

IMHO a good metric would be to simply ask people (probably on that first quiz) "What are your plans for working on this course?" where "I intend to finish the whole course" would be one option of many (and many people who answer at least one question right in the first quiz would honestly say that they never even intended to 'graduate') and then you'd get a reasonable completion rate by counting only those students.

> While many people are interesting in starting to learn something on their own, drop off rates are extremely high for MOOCs.

The near-(or at-)zero cost of MOOCs mean people will start them when they would not commit to something with a higher activation cost. To some extent, the stats on drop-off aren't signs of being worse at getting people to complete them (though that's probably a factor to), but at getting people to start them when they would not start other kinds of programs. Which is often still a win, significant learning can happen without completing a curriculum.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com