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Comment by chewxy | Hacker News Reader

Betteridge's Law of Headlines says NO.

Katy Jordan did a study of MOOCs recently [0], and it was found that the completion rates are in fact quite abysmal. I suspect that the reason for this is because there isn't much incentive to continue studying.

So this is very much in line with the guy saying at the end of the article: Here's a library, now go get knowledge.

Learning, IMO doesn't happen like this. MOOCs will just perform the functions of a library, albeit far more efficiently. The function of a classroom (not necessarily a professor) is still quite necessary for structured learning. And of course, with a classroom comes TAs and professors... which makes the answer to the question, No

[0]http://www.katyjordan.com/MOOCproject.html

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> Katy Jordan did a study of MOOCs recently [0], and it was found that the completion rates are in fact quite abysmal. I suspect that the reason for this is because there isn't much incentive to continue studying.

No, it's because there is no burden to sign up, nor disincentive to dropping out. Thus, you get lots of people who sign up for them just to watch a few videos or to see what the course is all about, but they have no real buy-in.

According to a talk I saw by Andrew Ng, 43% of people who submit the first homework on Coursera go on to finish the course. That's actually a remarkably high completion rate IMO given the scale of the classrooms.

Not sure if it's the same researcher, but I heard an interview with one which talked about another problem with MOOCs - they're generally only useful to those people who already know how to learn. The autodidacts or people close to being autodidactic.

My own criticism of MOOCs is that they're not ideal for any subject with physical skills. I was a class tutor in the late 90s doing biology and electrical engineering classes. At this time the 'can learn everything from a computer!' crowd was getting really underway, and I remember wondering 'how is a computer going to teach you how tight to tie a liguture?'. Similarly, my favourite lecturer mentioned that for a lot of skills, a technical college is better. At university we might be expected to solder together a circuit, but zero time was spent teaching this skill. At a tech college, they do physical skills, starting with things like "here's a bunch of nails in a block of wood, solder wires across their heads" - exercises solely for honing physical skills.

And if you are having trouble doing a physical skill, having an expert pair of eyes see what you're doing is a hundred times better than trying to post it on a forum. For example, I'm an indifferent guitar player and have skimmed forums here and there for years, asking questions about this or that... but it was during my first lesson with a professional guitar teacher that I had considerable issues cleaned up with my technique.

MOOCs are a great tool to have in the arsenal, but they're not a replacement technology.

The data on that page isn't loading for me but either you're interpreting the data too naively or their study is missing some very important factors. With zero cost (money or otherwise) to enroll in a course the number of students who will sign up should be ridiculously inflated. There are people who just want to get their feet wet and try the first few assignments, some who just want to download all the videos, etc. Even if you only measure the people who did all the assignments or exams it's still not a direct comparison to a traditional classroom because there are: no curves (yet– though a few courses drop the lowest assignment grade), a hugely diverse student body without any verified qualifications/prerequisites, varying English (or other) abilities, etc.

Characterizing the completion rate as 'absymal' suggests that the number is intrinsically significant which really isn't the case outside of a traditional school– where the enrollment pool is already carefully filtered and there is external pressure to keep rates at some arbitrary level.

Edit: Forgot to refresh before submitting my reply so this is repeating some things which have already been said.

It's my belief that the MOOC, and online education in general, are something of a fad. It's new, and therefore interesting. But we've always had correspondence courses, and libraries where you can go and self-study almost any topic under the sun.

Online makes that easier (you don't have to leave the house, or type up papers and mail them in) but fundamentally, online education still requires a lot of self-discipline.

If most people were really good at self-study, we wouldn't have ever built up institutions of education. The real problem with undergraduate university environments right now is that the perceived value has fallen dramatically as tuition rates have skyrocketed. The universities and providers of easy financial aid are to blame for that.

> It's my belief that the MOOC, and online education in general, are something of a fad. It's new, and therefore interesting. But we've always had correspondence courses, and libraries where you can go and self-study almost any topic under the sun.

MOOCs differ from just reading a book on important aspects:

1. You have a teacher break down the content for you

2. You have graded assignments, which helps giving confidence you're absorbing the content

3. Interactive media (video, software) can be a more effective media to explain certain concepts

4. You have interaction with other students learning the same subject

> If most people were really good at self-study, we wouldn't have ever built up institutions of education.

Back in the day, your only chance of having access to knowledge was at institutions, so I'm afraid this is more of a tradition than anything else. Remember that the church was once the source of knowledge too. Nowadays though, people aren't going to college for knowledge as much as for filling a pre-requisite to enter the job market.

The problem with just looking at the completion rate is that it doesn’t really distinguish between the “just browsing” crowd and the “I really want to finish this course” crowd.

And the reason for looking at the completion rate I'd that neither does a headline saying "1 MILLION STUDENTS ENROLLED"

People learn in many different ways, and therefore I dont think you can make the sweeping statement: "Learning, IMO, doesnt happen like this."

I have always been someone who prefers self directed learning to the classroom (this coming from someone who spent 7 years in college / grad school), I think MOOCs are great and I get as much out of them as I did many college classes. I found the freedom to study any topic whenever I wanted to very liberating; I ended up studying more. Some MOOCs are certainly better than others, but you could say the same of regular classes.

There is definitely no replacement for office hours with professors, but facebook groups, community TAs, and Skype actually close the gap more than you'd think.

Completion rates are a red herring for a variety of reasons. The biggest is the total lack of risk inherent in joining a free class with no transcript. In college you should be more conservative about enrolling for classes because you can ruin your academic record or waste money, and you also often have degree requirements and schedule conflicts to worry about. With MOOCs you might as well join whatever you're even half-interested, even joining more classes than you can possibly realistically complete and finish whichever ones seem the most promising after a "trial period".

Generally speaking, for any system, reducing the cost of failure will make the failure rate go up.

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