Comments on: Too big too fail – One problem with MOOCs http://sharing-nicely.net/2012/10/too-big-too-fail-one-problem-with-moocs/ Philipp Schmidt's shared learnings Mon, 12 Aug 2013 14:10:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.8 By: Philipp Schmidt http://sharing-nicely.net/2012/10/too-big-too-fail-one-problem-with-moocs/#comment-517 Fri, 19 Oct 2012 15:21:00 +0000 http://sharing-nicely.net/?p=746#comment-517 This is not 100% relevant, but too good not to share as an example for extreme propensity to learn through failure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=zd7c5tQCs1I

]]> By: Philipp Schmidt http://sharing-nicely.net/2012/10/too-big-too-fail-one-problem-with-moocs/#comment-516 Fri, 19 Oct 2012 15:20:00 +0000 http://sharing-nicely.net/?p=746#comment-516 Good distinction between different MOOC models. The term has been redefined.

The early MOOCs offered plenty of room for failure, but nobody would notice. In some sense, the fact that in the new MOOCs drop-out rates are at least tracked is useful.

]]> By: Stian Haklev http://sharing-nicely.net/2012/10/too-big-too-fail-one-problem-with-moocs/#comment-514 Wed, 17 Oct 2012 17:54:00 +0000 http://sharing-nicely.net/?p=746#comment-514 It might be useful to distinguish between the original MOOCs (now by some referred to as cMOOCs) which were big (although not by far as big as the Coursera courses etc), but very open-ended and open to experimentation both as a course, and for individual learners (indeed you could argue that there was too little direction, which was problematic for many students). What I think you are referring to above are xMOOCs – Coursera, Udacity, EDx etc.

One of the things that was the most interesting to me in the very first courses – the ML and AI courses – was that there wasn’t really any opportunity for collaborative learning/socialization for students. Since the platform didn’t provide this, but you had a huge amount of tech-savvy individuals learning “in lockstep”, they ended up going to existing social platforms to create communities… in newer iterations, the platforms seem to include more forums etc in an attempt to capture this, but in the course I attended this worked very poorly, and the attempt to have all the social interaction within the login-portal of the courses might actually kill some of the entusiasm and experimentation that we saw in the first term… While at the same time being much easier to grasp for some people, of course…

]]> By: mozzadrella http://sharing-nicely.net/2012/10/too-big-too-fail-one-problem-with-moocs/#comment-513 Wed, 17 Oct 2012 15:19:00 +0000 http://sharing-nicely.net/?p=746#comment-513 P-I know we’ve talked a lot about Ravelry (https://www.ravelry.com) and to me that’s what a fail-safe environment looks like–passion-driven, supportive, real projects, members feel free to share their failures. The difference is that, since knitting is a hobby, the stakes are low. Also, I think trends like “fail fairs” or “failure halls of fame” can go a long way to finessing folks into failing :)

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