I failed my online course — but learned a lot about Internet education — from readwrite.com by Selena Larson (by way of eduwire.com)
Massive open online courses, or “MOOCs,” require a lot of motivation—and sometimes, a thick skin.

Excerpts (comments via DSC):

He provided great insight, paired it with interesting required readings, and led Google Hangouts throughout the course, though only a handful of students were able to participate. Time zone differences and limited space ultimately resulted in a select few students receiving the opportunity to participate in this more intimate online setting.

(From DSC:  Last I knew, only 25 students can get into one of these sessions; this seems to be a major mistake to use Google Hangouts if you are talking MOOCs with thousands of students; Coursera should have required that the professor use a different tool.)

I’ll admit it: I had minimal motivation. Sure, I didn’t want to waste $49, but I certainly didn’t stay up all night finishing a 600-word essay—the goal of receiving a course completion certificate just wasn’t appealing enough.

The quizzes were easy—we were given multiple attempts to get a perfect score—but the essays were a different story. Since the professor was unable to grade them himself, each student was subject to peer reviews—five of them. And each review impacted your grade.

I failed my first essay. All but one reviewer gave me a failing grade, for reasons unknown.

In true Internet fashion, these peer reviews were totally anonymous. I couldn’t discuss with my reviewer why he or she thought my essay was lousy, and I couldn’t defend my link to Fox News. I felt uncomfortable and powerless. Stupid.

(From DSC: I don’t have a lot of confidence in asking other students, who aren’t trained in teaching/pedagogy/grading, to effectively use rubrics to grade other students’ papers. Though one could turn right around and say that of many faculty members as well, who often lack training in education-related courses. But in the case of professors, they often build up such expertise over time.)

 

How MOOCs Can Succeed
(from DSC, I’m paraphrasing below)

  • Get rid of  anonymous grading
  • Get the price point right
    (From DSC: This is tough though, as such a figure most likely differs for each student.)

 

From DSC:
The graphic below attempts to relay the potential power of technologies such as IBM’s Watson in auto-curating content for MOOCs.  But there may be other uses for such technologies — such as if these technologies could be used to effectively grade papers, assignments, quizzes, etc. — then today’s MOOCs would be much more effective and would better address one of Selana’s key concerns.

 

Watson-MOOCs-NewTypesCollaboration-DChristian-2-14-13

 

 

WhatsWatson-March2014