Immediately upon exploring the course I knew it was going to
be a challenge. While I have an
undergraduate minor in computer science, I was intimidated by the deep down
technical nature of the course and the amount of programming knowledge involved. The course consisted of video lectures, homework
assignments, and quizzes, in the typical style of an xMOOC (Siemens, 2012). As I began to watch the lectures, the
instructor did make the complex material interesting and as easy as possible to
understand. His teaching technique
helped me grasp concepts with which I was slightly familiar, but did not know
in depth beforehand. Despite the complexity of the material,
the lectures were broken down in such a way that they could easily be rewatched
for clarity. No lecture segment was beyond
ten minutes. This greatly helped me fit
the lectures into my already busy schedule.
Daphne Koller of Coursera (2012) details that these lengths and design
are optimized for student learning. Due
to outside demands, I did not complete the programming assignments, but I did
read over them. As the course
progressed, it became clear that while the material was interesting, it was
really far too technical and geared towards truly “big” data (google, etc) for
me to get a lot of use out of it.
A couple of weeks ago, the original course I was interested in
finally started. After much
consternation rather to stick with the current course, or switch to a more
relevant and less intensive course, I made the switch. Now I am just another MOOC non-completer
statistic, as taking too much time, and assuming too much knowledge are the top
two reasons students don’t complete MOOCs (Coleman, 2013). The new course has a very similar format, but
the content is more relevant to my position as I will be using education
specific data, rather than the huge data sets that exist in the online world. The course is a series of video lectures,
with quizzes and problems to work each week.
Since this is my second round with Coursera, I am quickly recognizing a
theme! I would imagine this is useful to
learners taking multiple MOOCs as they can easily develop a routine once they
are familiar with the Coursera setup.
One difference in the courses is the level of “massiveness.” I do not have numbers of the enrollments, but
the difference in the traffic on the discussion boards leads me to believe that
the more general course, Web Intelligence and Big Data, has many more
enrollments. In some ways, this has been
both positive and negative. With more
discussions come more student questions and interaction, however, in the first
week of the course I was a bit overwhelmed.
I contributed to a thread to share your Linkedin info, and was inundated! The thread now has 315 posts and I believe I
have gotten even more connection requests.
While I do appreciate making connections and network with other
learners, it was too much for me. Since
the other course, Big Data in Education, only appeals to a limited demographic,
there is less traffic on the discussion boards, but it has been more mentally
manageable for me personally.
In what has been a common critique of xMOOCS, both of these courses
have not been especially cutting edge pedagogically speaking (Morris, 2012). The lecture/assignment/quiz format is
essentially an independent study course taken alongside thousands of
others. However, that said, I do believe
they have been effective. My foray into
the Web Intelligence and Big Data course has allowed me to talk to the statistician
in my office about data in different ways.
I believe the Big Data in Education course will enable me to generate
new ideas in using data that is available from my institution in furthering the
mission of my office and also in my studies.
While the completion rate for MOOCs is very low, I hope to stick with my
second MOOC through the end. In the
future I would love to explore additional MOOCs, although I am not likely to
become a “hard core learner” (Young, 2013).
Colman, D. (2013). MOOC interrupted. Top 10 reasons our
readers didn’t finish a massive open online class. Retrieved from http://www.openculture.com/2013/04/10_reasons_you_didnt_complete_a_mooc.html
Morris, S. M. (2012). Broadcast Education: A response to
Coursera. Open Education. Retrieved from http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/Journal/files/Broadcast_Education.html
Koller, D. (2012, June). Daphne Koller: What we're learning
from online education [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/daphne_koller_what_we_re_learning_from_online_education.html
Siemens, G. (2012). MOOCs are really a platform. Retrieved
from http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2012/07/25/moocs-are-really-a-platform/
Young, J. (2013). What Professors can learn from hard core
Mooc students. Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/article/What-Professors-Can-Learn-From/139367/
Micro MOOC survey:
