MOOCs: There Has to Be a Better Way

I am again examining the MOOCs and their approach to education. One recent course is an MIT course on what used to be called Strength of Materials. Some observations:

1. The instructor spends well more than half the time writing her note on the board without any real additional insight. The board should be a stage prop, not a means to re-write the notes. If you have them thus why re-write them?

2. The exam questions are interesting. Let me explain.

a. Some fifty plus years ago, with paper, pencil and slide rule, students attacked the same issues. Most likely it was done that way for a few centuries. One received an exam question on paper and then the student used what was called Engineering paper, a grid like sheet of paper, upon which you prepared the solution. You restated the givens, you then drew whatever diagrams you needed, then you proceeded through the equations in the analysis, then you inserted the numbers, used your slide rule, underlined the answers and so on. You interacted with the problem so as to get to know and understand it in a linear and proximate fashion. The pencil, paper and slide rule became an integrated whole.

b. In today's world the approach is dramatically different. The computer gives the problem on the screen, you must somehow capture that and convey it to whatever mode of processing you choose. I first started out with paper but bad mistake. It appears that using Excel spread sheets as a substitute for your Engineering paper works better. But beware, you must copy exactly. For example a 1.59 may appear as a 1.50 or even get copied that way.  Then the answer is inserted into the same screen from which you got the information. Watch as you units and what I have found essential is to copy from Excel into the computer screen. The problem is that the computer never understands your level of thought and your only feedback is the right or wrong mark. There is no way to understand a mistake, say a sign, and remedy it. The exam measure more the ability to copy in correctly and copy out correctly and to be correct in one's units! It does not measure understanding and it does not facilitate understanding.

Thus the change from half a century ago to today actually may defeat the purpose of education.

3. The Discussion groups are oftentimes chaotic. It is a mass of often divergent cultural approaches to learning, or worse, the participants may be actually assuming they are getting an MIT education. In reality this may be a move to checking reading skills and short term memory. Any mild dyslexia could and does cause havoc, one always writes the wrong number, close but not exact. Thus one spends time checking the transcriptions. One is not learning the material but fine tuning the process. The participants do not seem to understand that, unless they come from a world in which that is the way they are educated, which many do.