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Comment by HaloZero | Hacker News Reader

It sounds like Harvey Mudd's program improves female enrollment but it's just seems like a good idea in general

The quick program for Harvey Mudd seems to be 1) Make the problems more practical in application (ie controlling a robot, modelling a disease) 2) Giving students choices in what problems they are interested in 3) Segmenting students according to skill set, thus putting people who have been programming in another course that will match their pace better and allowing students who are more new to have their own pace.

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I think Harvey Mudd's approach is fantastic. I love the idea of two separate tracks for getting people to code. It allows people to take an academic risk which they normally wouldn't be able to take for fear of destroying their GPA.

I think this is a fundamental problem with STEM programs in general. Why have grades and tracks at all? The important thing is to learn the material, and not what grade you got on a test at some arbitrary point in time. This is what is so brilliant about MOOCs like Khan Academy. No grades, and you can repeat the material until you know it.

The problem with MOOCs is that they have a pretty low retention rate. Sure you can repeat the material until you know it, but how many people actually will? The benefit of having a physical class is that you can turn to the professor or TAs for help if you're having trouble. It's also more difficult to completely fall behind because there are milestones in place (tests, assignments, projects, etc.). This isn't to say that MOOCs don't have their place, but they are not a replacement for the traditional classroom model.

Yes, that's definitely a problem, particularly the way most classes on services like Udacity are done. You can't just videotape the lectures and translate the homework/quizzes into a MOOC and expect that it's going to be compelling.

Khan Academy definitely gets this right where other MOOCs really fail. The quizzes are actually quite engaging and the 'gamified' point giving, despite being incredibly cheesy, really seems to work.

I agree that there is no replacement for TAs and the professor, and I think that's where a lot of confusion about MOOCs stems from. This is where 'flip' teaching comes about. Instead of wasting time doing daily lesson planning and grading papers, the TAs and the professor spend their time helping students out who are having trouble. The students can watch/re-watch pre-recorded lectures and then take quizzes during class time which can be graded by the computer.

> The problem with MOOCs is that they have a pretty low retention rate.

Actually, I think that's one of the strengths of MOOCs (or, at least, a symptom of its strengths.)

> The benefit of having a physical class is that you can turn to the professor or TAs for help if you're having trouble. It's also more difficult to completely fall behind because there are milestones in place (tests, assignments, projects, etc.).

The MOOCs I've been in EdX and Coursera all have had both milestones of the type described, and TAs to go to for help.

What they don't have is a large up-front cost to enter, so there's no reason for people not to try out classes when they aren't completely certain are the right fit -- and little reason, even if the fit is good, not to drop out of one iteration and come back and take the course again if other life events that do have a cost for not dealing with now erupt.

So, yeah, a higher rate of people starting MOOCs and not completing them compared to traditional courses is to be expected -- and that's a good thing.

As someone who went to Harvey Mudd I can attest that the program is very well designed. All Mudd students (CS/Eng/Math/Physics/Bio/Chem) are required to take some computer science courses. And theyve done a tremendous job at gearing those courses for people who have never coded in their life, and people who have been coding since they were 5.

I think it's also great because it encourages students majoring in other science and engineering fields to learn CS and see how it is applicable to their field of study. I also like how they try to make it fun. My intro CS classes were really dry and boring. I only pushed through them because I was set on being a computer engineering major and knew I would like the more advanced classes.

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