WDUi Forum

In this article about the early years of Massive Open Online Courses [https://techcrunch.com/2014/09/11/the-m ... ccounter=1], the author reports disappointing results of MOOCs: Originally hailed as a revolution in learning, MOOCs have seen disappointing course completion numbers. Coursera and Udacity, two of the most prominent online learning hubs, have seen about 8 million enrollments in the past few years. Unfortunately, half of those students didn't even watch a single lecture, and only a few hundred thousand completed the course they signed up for.
(summary from [https://slashdot.org/story/207173])

This is not directly relevant for the WDUi, as we do not plan for 'massive' online courses. But the poor outcome of those online courses, which are often produced by professionals with a lot of effort, raises doubts in me if we should offer educational resources which are made for 'consumption by users'. Many of these offerings remind me of Nuremberg Funnels [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Funnel]. This is not my idea of 'dignified learning'.

I've taken and completed several MOOCs, and tried and abandoned a lot more.

A MOOC on "The Science of Happiness" by the UC-Berkeley Greater Good Science Center taken years ago has been my best experience, with lessons sticking to this day.

In my Law and Psychology Lab course, I do require students to do a short Coursera MOOC on Psychological First Aid training (created by Johns Hopkins University), for which they receive a certification if they opt to take all the quizzes. I ask students to give me specific feedback on the experience, and it tends to be very positive, even though it doesn't come close to the interaction of the heart of my course during the semester.

I think we can consider offering some standalone, self-taught courses for the sake of introducing people to content. But I'm hoping that most of our offerings will be interactive and live.