Discussion Forums

One aspect of MOOCs I was very interested in were the discussion boards.  The idea of discussing material with potentially thousands of people discussing concepts, homework problems, lives, etc I thought was a unique feature of a MOOC.  Like a huge study group you can access without leaving your room.

I am not finding the forum for this class very useful.  For the first few weeks, the number one topic seemed to be people not understanding that calculus was indeed required and whining about it.  Seriously.

The forums got a bit better after those people either got over it or dropped.  I never did find a comment thread that discussed the material as a study group would, however.  Various geographical regions did form 'study groups', and perhaps I should have joined one of those to find the interactions I wanted.  I believe they were meeting on Google plus and other chat type rooms.

One of the most common threads for the course were people explaining American sports and customs to foreigners.  Many of the examples were on the line of 'if someone makes a free throw 80% of the time, what is the probability of that person making the second but not the first free throw?'  If you don't know basketball, this problem has added difficulty!

If people were discussing the homework, posters were more likely to just submit a worked out answer than a discussion.  I stopped looking at the threads on the homework at this point - once I saw a worked out answer, I couldn't 'unsee' it and looking at the answers is no way to learn something.

After I finished the course, I was at a meeting of the Texas Section of APS, and we were discussing students taking physics courses remotely at another college or university in TX.  One university that had some success with this arrangement said their students to interact with each other across campuses. They use Skype or Google Chat plus document cameras.  It works for them, so I do believe it is possible for students to interact online in a meaningful way.  It it clear that it must be done with intent along with some planning.