Level of Demand in MOOC Classes

I don’t know if it’s because it’s summertime or just the luck of the draw, but my junior year classes seem to be demanding less of me.

Not that I’m not learning a great deal from them.  In fact, my Coursera Mathematical Philosophy course started with a bang this week by demolishing Zeno’s Paradox through a combination of conventional logic and simple calculus.  And I’ve finally “gotten to the other side” in my appreciation of Nietzsche thanks to last week’s readings and lectures on the great philosopher in my Saylor.org Existentialism class.

But neither of these classes (nor any others) seem to want to put students to the test beyond asking a handful of multiple-choice questions with obvious answers (including – if I recall – a True-Falser regarding whether the hyper-religious Kierkegaard believed in God).  And while I’ve just noticed a voluntary writing assignment associated with a U of London course I’m taking on the principles of UK common law, it’s been a long time since graded writing has been a major component of any online course I’ve taken for my One Year BA.

In fact, looking back at all the MOOCs I’ve taken to date, I can think of only one (Wesleyan’s The Modern and the Postmodern) that required a substantial amount of writing, and 3-4 with truly challenging assessments and demanding homework assignments.  Which is intriguing, given that nearly all my classes were challenging with regard to the ideas they exposed students to via quality lectures and serious reading requirements.

Now as I’ve pointed out previously, different MOOCs have different missions.  So I can understand why a course designed to expose students to a new subject that they could pursue elsewhere in greater depth (like the common law course I just mentioned) would not want to create high barriers to completion by making the workload to daunting, or increase chances for frustration and failure by making tests and assignments too hard or time consuming.

But limited demands and low thresholds for success also have the potential to lower student motivation.  For if everything involved with a course is presented as optional or easy, why not skip a week of lectures of bag the reading?  While I’ve never believed the stereotype that says students won’t bother to learn a thing if “it won’t be on the test” (particularly with regard to voluntary MOOC students), I think it’s simple human nature to make the demands you put on yourself reflect to the demands put on you by others (especially teachers).

So we seem to be faced with the challenge of striking the right balance between openness to all with reasonable barriers to success vs. not asking so little of students that they don’t take a course seriously.

I’m probably jumping the gun a bit since I am planning to come up with final set of thoughts/recommendations based on my experiences once this One Year BA project is completed.  But with nearly 20 classes either completed or in process, I think it’s safe to say that educators and MOOC developers should be looking at level-of-demand as the next frontier for experimentation and innovation.

One course that might point the way is the Einstein’s class I took in the spring which broke the course into different levels of engagement.  As always, students had the option to audit the course (i.e., just listen to the lectures, but not do any of the graded assignments).  But for students who wanted to go further, the professor created a quantitative track that required students to do weekly problem sets and tests involving relatively challenging calculations based on the Special Theory of Relativity, and a qualitative track that simply required students submit a creative work based on the life and ideas of Albert Einstein.

While I don’t think this structure worked perfectly, given the material, the notion of having multiple tracks – each associated with different levels of challenge – was an intriguing one which I hope more MOOC developers will emulate.

Why not, for example, provide an auditor’s certificate to those who just watch the lectures (presuming this can be tracked), a completion certificate for those who complete work that involves simply demonstrating that they’ve paid attention during class, and an honors certificate for those who complete more difficult assignments that reflect a deeper engagement with the material?

This would give students looking for simple exposure an option that won’t scare them off, while giving those who want to delve deeper a chance to put their knowledge and skills to the test.   Such a hierarchy could also provide motivation for students who join a course at a lower level to achieve more (letting auditors know that moving to the next level won’t kill them, while giving students who really get into the class the chance to challenge themselves more).

Such self-segregation could also let teachers know what percentage of the tens of thousands who sign up for a class are planning to do more complicated assignments (such as written essays or demanding tests), allowing them to consider more hands-on options with an understanding that such assignments are likely to only be taken by a small percentage of enrollees.

This concept is currently just a sketch.  But I hope anyone reading this blog who is in any way involved with course creation will give some thought to how to make my life more difficult between now and the end of the year.