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I’ve done a lot of MOOCs in the last few weeks.  The vast majority of them rate “Meh” on the scale from “Ack!” to “HOLYCANIBITZ!”  At the two extremes, I feel like I should say a bit more about them, but here are a bunch of the Meh courses that are so forgettable that I don’t have much to comment on.

Course Title: English: Skills for Learning
Provider: The Open University via OpenLearn
Price: Free
Level: Introductory
Effort: Self-paced, 24 hours, estimated 8 weeks
Prerequisites: None
Completion awards: Statement of Participation, Open Badge

About the course:
This was a fair mix of instruction and practical exercises.  The information in this course is a very small subset of the information in The Good Study Guide, which I’ve previously mentioned.  The actual time on the course for me (taking the practical exercises very seriously) was about 6 hours.  If I didn’t have the Good Study Guide, it may have been a nice reference before beginning higher education.

 

Course title: Information Security
Provider: The Open University via OpenLearn
Price: Free
Level: Advanced
Effort: Self-paced, 10 hours
Prerequisites: None
Completion awards: Statement of Participation

About the course:
This course is listed as an advanced course, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how. Really, this could have been a much shorter MOOC than its realistic 90 minutes (most of which was spent choosing and listening to a podcast): CIA stands for Confidentiality, Integrity, and Accessibility, and listen to information security podcasts.  Job done.

 

Course Title: Good Brain, Bad Brain: Basics
Provider: University of Birmingham via FutureLearn
Price: Free
Level: Introductory
Effort: 9 hours over 3 weeks, commencing on set date
Prerequisites: None
Completion awards: Certificate of Achievement + Transcript (£59 + shipping) for completing 90% of course content, attempting all tests, with score of 70%, or Statement of Participation (£39 + shipping) for completing 50% of course content and attempting all tests

About the course:
Well, as the title of the course implies, this is very basic.  But it’s also very good.  It’s a concise and informative description of many of the functions and attributes of the brain.  And while very interesting, I don’t think my heart would be in it to complete the three-part series this course is a part of.  Also, I don’t think I could take it listening to those pronunciations and reading those spelling choices again.  It felt like every scientific word was deliberately pronounced wrong and spelled the least usual way.

 

Course Title: Introduction to Cyber Security
Provider: The Open University via FutureLearn
Price: Free
Level: Introductory
Effort: 24 hours over 8 weeks, commencing on set date
Prerequisites: None
Completion awards: Statement of Participation (£34 + shipping) for completing 50% of course content and attempting all tests

About the course:
This seems like it would be a good course for someone to start considering cyber-security. As these concepts are a part of my job, none of the information in it was new, and I completed the 8 week course in about three days, so maybe 10 hours or so. I like that this course doesn’t shy away from technical descriptions of digital encryption techniques, though it doesn’t describe any actual computational mechanism for any of the concepts. As it was most definitely not directed at me, I can only say that it seems good, and has all the points and more of the things I’d want to teach someone for a primer on the subject.

It needs to re-think its active learning portions, though.  Though this is an introductory course and is limited to digital information rather than general information, it’s far more useful to all learners than the “advanced” course on OpenLearn above.

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As with the previous MOOC review, I had signed up to these courses to help prepare myself for university study.  When doing this, I’m hoping for useful content, but am willing to walk away with just reinforcing good study habits, as well.  These didn’t tick either box.

Course Title: Succeed with maths – Part 1, Succeed with maths – Part 2
Provider: The Open University via OpenLearn
Price: Free
Level: Introductory
Effort: Self-paced, 24 hours, estimated 8 weeks
Prerequisites: None
Completion awards: Statement of Participation, Open Badge

About the course:
I didn’t honestly get very far into the first course before I realised that this was an especially remedial maths course.  I hadn’t really expected the first one to be too much more involved, so I just took the quizzes to make certain I wasn’t going to be leaving a gap in my knowledge, and got through it.

The second course, though, I thought would at least have some kind of intermediary maths in it.  Instead, it advances to the level of reading graphs.

The problem with MOOCs like this is that anybody who is disciplined, organised, and educated enough to be able to learn from such a MOOC has already far outstripped the content of this MOOC.  This is to say that there is essentially a non-existent target group for this MOOC.  Here’s my Venn Diagram describing this:
Success with maths Target Students

[Source: My arse (2016)]

This makes it a useless course.  As a result, the content is useless, and it’s useless to use to develop study habits.

Thankfully, there ARE solutions out there.  One of the solutions is so fantastic that it’s shifted a portion of my study plan for my degree.  I’ll review this other solution at a later date.

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As I stated in my last post, I’ve been using free MOOC resources to prepare for university-level learning.  I logically thought this free course would be a good place to start.  Here’s my review of it:

Course title: Taking Your First Steps Into Higher Education
Provider: The Open University via OpenLearn
Price: Free
Level: Introductory
Effort: Self-paced, 24 hours, estimated 8 weeks
Prerequisites: None
Completion awards: Statement of Participation, Open Badge

About the course:
This course draws material and inspiration from the Open University’s Access modules, Y031, Y032, and Y033 for content on Arts & Humanities, Social Sciences, and STEM subjects, respectively.  The full Access modules give a small and non-threatening taste of higher education study, to help you determine if it’s right for you.  This MOOC is, then, really a taster course for a taster module.  In theory, it’s meant to help you evaluate which of the general subject types you might like to study, and if you think you might enjoy (or be capable of) studying in higher education.

In reality, it comes off more like a commercial for the Open University, but one with its heart firmly in the right place.  It does do what it says it will do, but it’s a bit rhetorical in that it assumes and then insists that the answer is always that if you’re at all interested, then its right for you, and tries to convince you of this.  But this is only for higher education in general.  It’s a bit of a cheerleading exercise rather than an objective view giving both positive and negative views.

It does an excellent job of preparing those who have not studied at higher levels for a fundamental shift in learning philosophy, the change of focus from led instruction to self study.  It doesn’t do much for giving you tools for overcoming this shift, but does impress its importance.

The arts and humanities discussion was the most surprising for me.  I came into this module with a prejudice against the very nature of art history, evaluation, and appreciation. But within just a few short questions, Dr. John Butcher had shifted my world in response to art, particularly contemporary art. He had also done it in the section on poetry evaluation. I was able to access a poem I’d studied earlier and instantly recognise values in it I had never seen before, found an obvious meaning I’d never considered, and even uncovered additional subtext relative to modern philosophy that was shouting out for me to share my experiences with others.

The social studies sections were just the opposite.  Dr. Jonathan Hughes felt patronising and dismissive in his lecture. I wasn’t at all surprised to learn that he was the lead on the project for this MOOC, with its rhetorical approach and cheerleader enthusiasm. It’s a terrible shame, too, because I’m deeply passionate about social sciences, particularly social psychology and development.  But he would repeatedly invite discussion, only to then give the ‘right’ answer. At one point, he invited the student to compare their personal answers to his … Only to have his answers (and not even his exact answers, but a specific interpretation of them) be the basis for quiz questions later.  I found it quite insulting.

Finishing things up with reliable STEM subjects was a relief.  Dr. Laura Hills certainly knew how to lecture and prepare learning materials. Her approach quickly invited independent thought and provided the confidence (to me at least) that I felt the course should have been promoting all along.

Over all, I feel that the MOOC lacked substance of useful content unless you A) want to go to university, and B) don’t know if you’d rather take humanities, social sciences, or STEM subjects. Which should bring the total number of humans on this planet who would actually find the course useful to … Zero? Nobody wants to go to university without at least having an idea of what kind of studies they want to pursue. Sure, they might not be able to decide between two or three degrees, but to have no clue?  Whatever.

I do feel that I gained a lot of personal insight from this however, especially thanks to the amazing questions from Dr. Butcher.  It just wasn’t the insight I was expecting.  The warnings about the pitfalls of self study and few other revelations scattered throughout the sections are useful and appreciated, and will be remembered, but possibly not at the cost of the 10 real hours or so I spent with it.