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Comment by bzalasky | Hacker News Reader

Udacity and other online courses are great for people that already know how to learn. These sorts of programs won't help people that don't know how to learn on their own. However, I will say I can count the classes in college that couldn't have been replicated in an online format on two hands. All of theses classes still could have benefited from putting lectures online. The thing that is lacking in online courses is in-depth, in-person discussion in settings of about 30 people. Forums like this are great for teaching critical thinking. My favorite class in college was an undergraduate anthropology class that focused on a different topic each week. There were two different perspectives (in journal articles) and you'd be assigned one to defend in the next class. I think this kind of thing is hard to replicate in digital settings. Thoughts?

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30 people is a completely arbitrary number, arrived at not because it was the optimal class size, but because of resource constraints.

It's absolutely arbitrary, but it's a small enough number that everyone has a chance to contribute to the discussion. With this particular class it had nothing to do with resource constraints... maybe more to do with how many students were interested. I didn't have a single anthropology class after 101 that had more than 35 people in it (and this was at a large state school).

Both of your points are valid objections to MOOCs.

Not sure whether you are correct. If you are, I believe that MOOC model can be modified to fix them. (ex: local meetups for teaching how to learn, google hangouts for in-person discussions).

What is interesting is that your single paragraph contains more valid objections to MOOCs than the original 4500 word essay. It was a collection of anecdotes, emotional appeals. Which is really lame, considering that MOOCs are just getting off the ground, early alpha, there are tons of real serious flaws.

I heart the idea of MOOCs. I enjoyed my grad school. I've recently taken two online classes. Loved Ng's Machine Intelligence, dropped out of Startup Owner Manual (but got a few good pointers). When MOOCs take off, they will change education as much as self-driving car will change the car industry.

I'm a fan of MOOCs as well (haven't used that acronym before). Nobody should have to sit in a lecture hall with 300 other people trying not to fall asleep.

> There were two different perspectives (in journal articles) and you'd be assigned one to defend in the next class.

I always thought of these kinds of assignments as somewhat strange. You have to defend something you might not care about, not believe in or even be strongly opposed to.

I think that teaches you how to be politician. How to find arguments for the cause that is not yours for gains completely unrelated to the real validity or value of the cause. I felt we are being thought how to be dishonest and that it pays.

It teaches you how to recognize bias.

> I think this kind of thing is hard to replicate in digital settings.

I think we are a group of people discussing a topic in a digital forum right now.

Coursera, Udacity, and the others all have forums as well where there are extended discussions on various topics between students, TAs and faculty.

It's not the same thing. Thinking critically and speaking in front of a group of people is different than participating in a discussion online.

It's relatively rare activity for adults. Especially when compared to online discussion.

Are you sure future adults would benefit from being able to have in person discussion with group of people if there is almost no chance of them having such in their adult lives?

I don't know what you do, but I couldn't get through a day as a software engineer without those skills. That said, I'll give you credit for pointing out critical thinking as a rare activity for most adults. ; )

I'm web developer who works remotely.

I worked in corporation for some time where we had multi-person real live meetings but they were devoid of any real discussion or content.

I also worked in few start-ups where we discussed important things in person but I never talked to more than two people at the same time.

If you really have to discuss things that require critical thinking with a group of people daily I think you are fairly unique and I don't envy you. :-)

Daily, the group is no more than 3 or 4 other engineers and designers (and there's plenty of time to code w/ headphones on), but the core skill I'm talking about is being able to think critically on your feet. We pair code a lot, and I feel like that's one of the places where experience thinking out loud is helpful.

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