Confirming the MOOC Myth

The following reflection is based on the article:

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/12/06/mooc-research-conference-confirms-commonly-held-beliefs-about-medium#ixzz2mibalZVa


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 The article talks about the current state of MOOCs. The first point of interest brought about was that "engagement falls dramatically especially after the first 1-2 weeks of a course". Last year I enrolled in a statistics MOOC which was quite interesting the whole way through but similar to what is mentioned, my engagement fell off around week 4 onwards. I still found all the content relevant and interesting, it was just the lack of rigorous class times which made it difficult to keep to a schedule of learning all the new topics and thus I myself would have been one of the statistics reported in this articles and agree with the program with student engagement.

The rest of the article questions the cost/time-effectiveness of MOOCs. The time investment to translate courses to an online environment as well as finding the supporting staff infrastructure to run it when there is little to no immediate investment return makes it hard to justify. From my perspective, the rapidly changing landscape of technology and the fact the many of the staff on producing the MOOCs are from an older generation can sometimes bring about design ideas which may not be ideal for the current generation to maximise learning. Young adults these days surely think differently from what the 'professored' generation preferred 30 years ago. I'm not arguing that what they implement is bad, in fact the tried and testing teaching methods are all still viable. Just that there might better ways to do things these days that people may oppose just because people are resilient to change.

Getting backing from key stakeholders is indeed difficult as like the article says, 10% student retention isn't going to sell the MOOC idea very well. Seems like financial support is a major limiting factor to taking MOOCs to the next step but then again what innovation can be done without money, so I guess my statement applies to everything.
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