I had two goals in taking this class. One was to learn more about statistics, and two was to reflect on how MOOCs are going to change the face of higher education and their implications for Trinity University.
In a traditional university course, a credit hour means 3 hours of work per week, usually 1 hour in class and 2 hours outside of class. A semester is ~15 weeks. For this course there were usually 4 lectures a week, ranging from 6 to 32 minutes. The average weekly lecture time was 76 minutes, ranging from 53 to 93 minutes. The course lasted 7 weeks, and I spend around 2 hours outside of class completing homework assignments and quizzes. So, that is perhaps 0.5 credit hours? If this course lasted 15 weeks, I could see it being worth 1-2 credit hours if there were some additional lectures each week.
I don't think that this experience, even for 1 credit hour, compares to a class at a brick and mortar institution. I would say this course gives a pretty shallow understanding of basic statistics. This isn't really a criticism of the course - I can't imagine a 7 week online course achieving much more. I do feel that I have learned something, and my 'grade' was an 86% (so B? B+). However, at least at TU, I would expect my students to have a deeper understanding for a B. Personally I'd give myself a C.
But I suppose I have to reiterate, I think for what the class was it was pretty good. I do have a better understanding on how basic statistics are calculated. Although I would probably have to look a few things up, I could preform any of the calculations again. I didn't learn R, but it doesn't seem complicated. It was a good introduction, and if I were taking a university course on the same subject, this would have been a perfect lead in.
What's missing in these courses is feedback and support from your professor and classmates. There is very little taught in a university that couldn't be learned from reading books. The obvious exception is science lab courses. But for the majority of courses, a library card is the cheaper option.
But that is not why students go to college. The reason to go to college (and the best one you can get into at that) is to be able to interact with experts in their fields and with students with similar educational background as your own. I was very frustrated during this class when I couldn't ask questions of the professor. Although Dr. Caffo did in fact answer some questions in the discussion boards, the days that transpired lessened the impact of his answers. Because the discussion boards were filled with students of varying education, enthusiasm, and level of commitment, I quickly found wading through the boards unsatisfying. I wish I had lingered there more for my own education on MOOCs, but I just didn't get much reward from them in taking the coures.
I suppose there are courses in college where you do not interact with the professor and are only given multiple choice tests, but in my opinion those courses are not very good ones. I realize that in larger schools there is a buffer of TA's between the students and professors - but usually only at the intro level and at least the TA's are 'experts in training'.
If MOOCs have the power to eliminate the need to go to college, I wonder why libraries didn't do the same thing 100 years ago.
Instead, I believe MOOCs are more like a very interactive book. But since the content is unavailable after the course is over, a book you must return. I think that in the college setting, MOOCs can supplement a course. Even be used to prepare students, as long as the scheduling works.
As for Trinity, I think the access our students have to professors and their talented classmates is our number one selling point, and MOOCs don't threaten this. What we should perhaps using online content for is allowing our students an additional tool to learn.
Perhaps the best application for TU would be a Calculus bridge course over the summer. Many of our student struggle with math, and this often prevents them from completing science and engineering majors. We could make a 6 week boot camp where we assigned online lectures, along with homework assignments and quizzes that would be graded by TU faculty. Even set up chat rooms with only TU students. This type of approach would yield, IMHO, better results than just suggesting a few Coursera courses.
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