> But found that I had no reason to stay in it, or to fight for my grade the way I did when a set of consequences were on my back.
So? I failed to ascertain from the article why this is supposed to be some kind of problem.
Also, as far as I can see, quite a few people do find some reason to stay in, and fight for their grade. I've taken several online courses:
• The Norvig/Thrun AI class at Stanford
• Thrun's robot car class at Udacity
• Evans' applied cryptography class at Udacity
• Jackson and Shoham's game theory class at Coursera
• Ng's machine learning class at Coursera
• Abu-Mostafa's learning from data class at Caltech
At most of these, the forums were full of people who evidently found a reason to stay in. Whenever there was any ambiguity in a question, there would be spirited discussion and vigorous arguments from those who thought that the ambiguity had cost them a point.
There did tend to be more of this on Udacity courses than on Coursera courses. I think it because the Udacity forums are based on a Stack Exchange clone, whereas the Coursera forums are more like traditional forums.
On the other hand, the Caltech learning from data course had some good forum action, and its forums are quite plain and simple, so I don't think forum software explains the difference between Udacity and Coursera. Part of it might be that Abu-Mostafa frequently answers questions on the forum, whereas at Coursera I didn't see the professors on the forums much--only TAs.
If you need some kind of threat looming over you in order to motivate you to stick with a course and no such threat is available, why take that course? Go take some course in a subject that actually interests you enough that learning more about it is sufficient motivation.
My point is that its important to factor motivation into product conception and design. Sure, we could all read wikipedia and articles all day (i mean, we do) - but having measurable "buckets" for our choices make them easier to explain. Hence the entertainment or resume-builder formulas I laid out, which appear to fit your motivational measurements.
Comments
> But found that I had no reason to stay in it, or to fight for my grade the way I did when a set of consequences were on my back.
So? I failed to ascertain from the article why this is supposed to be some kind of problem.
Also, as far as I can see, quite a few people do find some reason to stay in, and fight for their grade. I've taken several online courses:
• The Norvig/Thrun AI class at Stanford
• Thrun's robot car class at Udacity
• Evans' applied cryptography class at Udacity
• Jackson and Shoham's game theory class at Coursera
• Ng's machine learning class at Coursera
• Abu-Mostafa's learning from data class at Caltech
At most of these, the forums were full of people who evidently found a reason to stay in. Whenever there was any ambiguity in a question, there would be spirited discussion and vigorous arguments from those who thought that the ambiguity had cost them a point.
There did tend to be more of this on Udacity courses than on Coursera courses. I think it because the Udacity forums are based on a Stack Exchange clone, whereas the Coursera forums are more like traditional forums.
On the other hand, the Caltech learning from data course had some good forum action, and its forums are quite plain and simple, so I don't think forum software explains the difference between Udacity and Coursera. Part of it might be that Abu-Mostafa frequently answers questions on the forum, whereas at Coursera I didn't see the professors on the forums much--only TAs.
If you need some kind of threat looming over you in order to motivate you to stick with a course and no such threat is available, why take that course? Go take some course in a subject that actually interests you enough that learning more about it is sufficient motivation.
Those are huge accomplishments - congrats.
My point is that its important to factor motivation into product conception and design. Sure, we could all read wikipedia and articles all day (i mean, we do) - but having measurable "buckets" for our choices make them easier to explain. Hence the entertainment or resume-builder formulas I laid out, which appear to fit your motivational measurements.