"The Drawbacks of Massively Open Online Courses" by Ashlee Watson

Ashlee Watson

Writing 150

20 November 2013

Issues Paper

The Drawbacks of Massively Open Online Courses 

There is always that new craze that begins and becomes popular and then slowly dies down. We are at the peak of popularity for online education. MOOCs, Massively Open Online Courses, have become popular for students wanting to seek education through the internet. Mathieu Plourde dissects MOOCs in this illustration.

 

(Plourde)

We live in such a digital world, where people are constantly tweeting, facebooking, and posting their latest pictures and comments. Through these social media sites and use of the internet, students of all ages can now participate in education through the internet, and online lectures. Courses have open registration, are full with 100 to 100,000 students, and have open contact with other students (Plourde). However, students involved in MOOCs, miss out on the college social life and student teacher interaction as they work to receive a certificate that may not be viewed as reputable as a college diploma.

Those who made it happen:

Anything that we would ever want to know can be gleaned from the internet. We can simply “google it.” Years ago, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology began a project called OpenCourseWare, making all of the materials, including lectures and assignments from their school, free and available online (What You Need to Know about MOOCs). MOOCs became popular due to five main startup companies, edX, Coursera, Udacity, Khan Academy and Udemy. These companies have made their lectures available to students and those online. “Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and several Ivy League universities were the first to offer this form of MOOC, involving some of their most popular professors” (Young). Professors from all over began to see the success that these courses and online lectures had for students, as other major universities, Harvard, Berkeley, and MIT, started to offer these courses. They began to put video lectures and other useful sources online for the students.

A Network for Learning: 

MOOCs are courses that are open, participatory, distributed and give you a life-long network for learning (MOOC.me). MOOCs are not just schools or online courses, they are sites set up so that students can collaborate and engage with other students who are also seeking learning. This image is from a video explaining what a MOOC is and how it works. It is collaborative and shows how information is taken from all over. You have people who communicate through social media by using Twitter, Facebook, blogs and watching videos and reading articles and papers from other people. They then come together and talk about what they have learned. Thus creating a collaborative course, where students can learn from other students.

 

http://aqueousol.blogspot.com/2013/03/moocs-new-opportunity-for-science-and.html

It is a place where those who care about a topic or are eager to learn more can talk with those that are also interested. Students can interact and learn together through chat boxes and sharing assignments with others. MOOCs allow for the work students put into assignments to be shared with other students. MOOCs are collaborative as students learn from one another’s work. Those who participate in MOOCs have complete control of what they do, how they participate and the only ones who can decide their success in the course (MOOC.me).

Though these courses have been seen to be successful for students, they have their draw backs. MOOCs are completely based on your personal work ethic. There is very little accountability and one must be highly motivated to succeed and complete these courses.

In college there are essential elements that add to the success of the student. Students, who take MOOCs, miss out on the social life of college. Friendships are built as you interact with classmates and students on campus. Most who attend universities and colleges live in dorm rooms with roommates who they may or may not know. Friendships are built upon these interactions. Communicating with others is a vital skill today. Though you can use chat boxes over the internet, to talk to other classmates, you do not get the full effect. Not only do MOOCs lack the student to student interaction, it also lacks student to teacher interaction.

The Vital Classroom Setting: 

 Without attending a classroom setting, there is no physical, student to teacher interaction when taking classes in front of a computer screen. Robert Murphy, an economist for the Institute for Energy Research said, “MOOCs lacked many of the core aspects which people seek in traditional college classes. Most notably, there was almost no student to teacher interaction by which a student could get his questions answered. It is not surprising that one on one time would be scares when the students outnumber the professor by thousands to one.” (Murphy) Students interacted through the internet by grading and reading each other’s papers, and using chat boxes. In an article titled, MOOCs: Disruptive but Won’t Replace Brick-and-Mortar Institutions, the author discusses how MOOCs can do well at addressing to the needs of students but does not do well at helping all types of learners (Jane). In a classroom setting, you can use different methods to understand concepts, but over the internet, you cannot talk one on one with your professor, see labs, or work through homework one on one. A teacher can come to know the students better and their needs, as they physically interact and speak with them.

 

(Learner Weblog)

This graph illustrates the different types of interactions that are important and necessary for “deep and meaningful learning.” Having student to teacher interaction in the classroom can help students better understand the material and content of the course. Students can go up and talk to the teacher after class, the lectures are current and live, in which you can stop and have classroom discussion, by raising your hand.

The teacher's part:

Many may wonder how much effort these professors are really putting in, to teach these courses. Do they really have their whole heart into it? When there is a ratio of one teacher to thousands of students, do they really put there whole heart into teaching? Or do they teach to the masses, and checking it off the list? Or are they really passionate about teaching the students and desire for them to be successful? All of these professors have teaching jobs on campus and are already busy enough with the work they put into maintaining their classrooms and course work. Professors must post their lectures; respond to student’s emails and questions, and fulfill the other duties that are required. Brandi Scardilli explains, “. . . a single MOOC takes between 100 and 300 hours of preparation and between 8 and 10 hours of maintenance per week. Video production costs alone can range from $15,000 to $50,000, depending on how much the MOOC creator is willing to spend.” (Scardilli) Through all the money being spent, the time and effort that is being put into these courses, do people really think highly of them? Through my research about MOOCs, I have wondered how employers are looking at these courses. Depending on who you go through to take these MOOCs, you may or may not receive college credit. However, if you do, you can receive a college diploma. But if you do not, all that is given is what we give to the soccer player, a congratulations and a job well done, whether they played the game or not, they still get that matching trophy with their name and date engraved. Some of these courses are given a certificate of completion and as the soccer player, a job well done.

Completion is easy:

Just as employers wonder how reputable some of these courses are, another disadvantage is how reliable they are. Computers never work perfectly, the internet is not always a click away, and there are always glitches in the system. From the article, 5 Reasons Why MOOCs Provide Little Real Value, Justin Ferriman explains, “Here is something I found interesting: I clicked on the introduction video link and waited for the video to load. My connection was a little spotty, so I closed the window. Even though I didn’t watch all but one second of the video, the line item was “checked off” as complete. Surely there is a more accurate way to track user progress, right?” If something can be counted as completed when in reality, one has not even fulfilled an assignment, how can we rely on these courses. Though the course claims to be completed, have they really completed the learning and education that comes from it? This is what is causing employers to think. Today, if an employer is given two similar applications, are they more inclined to hire someone with a diploma from a prestigious university or someone with a “certificate of completion” from taking an online course.

Motivation and Accountability:

Success in these courses is the choice of the student. In order to complete these courses, many of which give you flexible time to complete, you have to be highly motivated and you are held accountable for what you do or do not accomplish. Many might say that in a classroom setting, you have to be motivated as well, which in fact is true. But in a classroom setting, it is a time set aside for you to only focus on that subject and getting your work done. Classes online are often very flexible and can be done at your convenience. It is easy to say, that you can do it later, but it is so easy to fall behind. From the article, Online Courses The Real Challenge Is “Motivation”, an tool has been created that can measure and assess the intrinsic motivation of a person. This is called the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory. This tool measures, “. . . participants’ interest/enjoyment, perceived competence, effort, value/usefulness, felt pressure and tension, perceived choice while performing and given activity, and experiences of relatedness.” It goes on to tell of a study that was conducted using this Intrinsic Motivation Inventory, to access online classes. They noted that the satisfaction that the students had with the course was significantly correlated to their intrinsic motivation and their final grade of the class. (Bennett and Monds)

My Solution:

Before this craze of online courses gets any more popular, I think that action needs to be taken to clean up the glitches in these online courses. These courses need to only be through universities. That way, they are up to standards on what is being taught, what is required of the student, and what is learned and understood from the courses. With these guidelines, students in front of a computer screen and students sitting in the classroom are still putting the same amount of time, work and effort into the classes. This will help employers know that who they are hiring, no matter if they received an online degree or a diploma from a university, will have received the proper education required, to meet the qualifications for a job.

Students involved in MOOCs, miss out on the college social life and student teacher interaction as they work to receive a certificate that may not be viewed as reputable as a college diploma. MOOCs are completely based on your personal work ethic. There is very little accountability and one must be highly motivated to succeed and complete these courses. Society needs to keep our brick-and-mortar colleges and traditional classrooms to get our education.