I’ve heard about MOOCs for some time now. In fact, I’ve even signed up for a few before. I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that I’ve never actually participated in one until now. That’s largely been due to the fact that I signed up for course while completing my masters; there was too much going on.
Recently, I wrote a post on MOOCs. Some sing their praises as the next great thing in education. I decided to enroll in a course and actually participate this time. I searched through Coursera and found Think Again: How to Reason and Argue. No one who knows me well will be surprised by this choice of course; while completing my undergrad in Math and Computer Science, I was attracted to pursuing further study in logic.
Think Again is a 12 week course; we’re currently is week 2. I was a few days late joining the course and in fact, have just finished going through the material for week 1. So far, I’ve been impressed with the quality of the material. Each week, the professors posts a series of lectures for students. They also organize discussion forums and Google hangouts. Then it’s up to the students to determine the discussion topics and to participate in the hangouts. I got distracted during some of the videos (the longest was 17 minutes and I have a habit of doing other things while watching videos or listening to podcasts) but it was handy to be able to rewind the video for any missing or thought provoking parts.
Lecture 1-8, Think Again
The videos are mostly of the professor but include embedded multimedia such as images and video clips, as well as a link to a YouTube video. Each video lecture has “homework”, which are exercises for immediate feedback. After week 3, I will have to write the first of four quizzes. Homework questions can be done as many times as the student likes; quizzes can only be done once. Some students in the forums have been complaining about the lack of interaction with the professor, particularly when a student questions the course content or disputes the solution to a homework question. However, the discussion groups seem lively and students discuss disputes.
If you’re interested in a topic and are looking for some other people to explore the topic with, participate in a MOOC. If you require a professor to validate your thoughts and confirm your conclusions, you will struggle with a MOOC. I recommend that you visit https://www.coursera.org, find a MOOC and try it out. Reserve judgement until you give it a fair chance.