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Kenny Lei
I will offer my experience with edX and online learning in general. Note that many class recordings are available for Harvard students only and not put on edX. It's very tempting for Harvard students to not attend lecture and instead just watch a livestream or recording later. My motivations for this are either the class was too early and I needed to catch up on sleep, or the weather was terrible that day (I'm from the west coast, sorry). I've done it countless times before, but I can tell you it's just not the same as being at lecture in person. Watching from a computer screen is not a live, interactive experience and I really don't devote the similar attention or desire to learn as I would in an actual lecture. With these recordings, I sacrifice the experience for convenience.
For one of my classes this semester, they experimented by incorporating the edX platform into the class, by having us watch videos and answers questions prior to class. They thought it would give them more time in lecture to do other things like lab demonstrations without really teaching what was going on. However, from the students perspective, it was a mess, since many did not watch videos/answer questions prior and the instructors felt like they didn't need teach material during lecture. The videos were also not a comprehensive learning guide so it was really hard to find the information to do problem sets or study for exams. So what I got from this class was that edX is very capable of missing something on parts of the actual class experience.
So overall, I think edX is a great way to open up information to the public, but it really doesn't equate to a formal education someone can attain at Harvard or other universities. So if you do take a class on edX, don't come with the expectation that the edX class is the same experience as the actual class at that university.
To offer an outside perspective, I got a chance to talk to Zach Sims from Codecademy, and he condemned MOOC's like edX for not really changing the way we learn, especially noting its literally just a video camera in traditional lectures. He has a valid point and I feel like edX really needs to go beyond video recordings to use the internet to change the way we learn. What Zach Sims did with Codecademy is a good model for the direction MOOC's like edX should follow.
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I will offer my experience with edX and online learning in general. Note that many class recordings are available for Harvard students only and not put on edX. It's very tempting for Harvard students to not attend lecture and instead just watch a livestream or recording later. My motivations for this are either the class was too early and I needed to catch up on sleep, or the weather was terrible that day (I'm from the west coast, sorry). I've done it countless times before, but I can tell you it's just not the same as being at lecture in person. Watching from a computer screen is not a live, interactive experience and I really don't devote the similar attention or desire to learn as I would in an actual lecture. With these recordings, I sacrifice the experience for convenience.
For one of my classes this semester, they experimented by incorporating the edX platform into the class, by having us watch videos and answers questions prior to class. They thought it would give them more time in lecture to do other things like lab demonstrations without really teaching what was going on. However, from the students perspective, it was a mess, since many did not watch videos/answer questions prior and the instructors felt like they didn't need teach material during lecture. The videos were also not a comprehensive learning guide so it was really hard to find the information to do problem sets or study for exams. So what I got from this class was that edX is very capable of missing something on parts of the actual class experience.
So overall, I think edX is a great way to open up information to the public, but it really doesn't equate to a formal education someone can attain at Harvard or other universities. So if you do take a class on edX, don't come with the expectation that the edX class is the same experience as the actual class at that university.
To offer an outside perspective, I got a chance to talk to Zach Sims from Codecademy, and he condemned MOOC's like edX for not really changing the way we learn, especially noting its literally just a video camera in traditional lectures. He has a valid point and I feel like edX really needs to go beyond video recordings to use the internet to change the way we learn. What Zach Sims did with Codecademy is a good model for the direction MOOC's like edX should follow.
See Questions On Quora
Continue reading...