Data Analysis MOOC Week 3: I’m a Dropout

Despite my best intentions, I have become another MOOC dropout.  Why am I not continuing to participate in this free course?

1. The format isn’t compelling.  The course is primarily built around four components: video lectures and notes, weekly quizzes, a discussion board, and two peer-graded assignments. The lectures are alright and although there are many other online R resources it’s nice to have concise descriptions of R procedures specifically linked to data analysis. The discussion board is also helpful but there are many other places to find help with R. As discussed in my previous post, the weekly quizzes are very disappointing as they are the primary means by which students in this course practice what they learn but they offer very, very little feedback.My biggest regret is that I won’t experience the peer-graded  assignments. While the idea of requiring students to grade one another’s work is likely driven largely by the logistics of a MOOC, peer-graded assignments can be very powerful and worthwhile even in small classes.  That these assignments are the only non-quiz activities in the course is disappointing especially since there are only two non-quiz assignments.  Although it will be helpful that each student should receive feedback from several classmates (if it’s possible, I might provide feedback on the reports for some of my classmates even though I won’t be writing my own), it often takes more than two attempts for students to learn and begin to master new skills.
2. Except for the peer-graded reports, there seems to be little reason for this course to be on a lockstep 8 week schedule. I might be able to stay with it if the timing were more flexible.  Even in the first three weeks of the course I’m having some trouble consistently making time to view all of the videos. I had planned to do this all at work as my supervisor supports this as important and valuable professional development but I’m having trouble doing that because it’s sometimes difficult to carve out the time and I feel guilty watching online videos at work for a non-credit course when I feel like I should be doing something more (visibly and authentically) productive.
3. I can’t convince myself to participate in the two peer-graded reports, the only meaningful assignments in this course.  This is linked directly to the material of this specific course and is not a criticism of the course itself. I simply can’t muster the will to conduct additional data analysis and write additional reports for this course when those are two of my primary job duties.  It’s not that I don’t think that I could learn from the activities, develop new skills, and become a better data analyst and writer.  I just can’t bring myself to spend so much time analyzing data and writing reports unrelated to either my job or my research.  I am disappointed as I was looking forward to these substantive activities, especially being able to receive feedback from others and seeing how others approached the same activities.

Although I’m disappointed to have decided to not continue with the activities of this MOOC, I am happy to have enrolled and tried it out.  I will continue to download the course materials so I can reference them when I am ready to put them into practice in meaningful ways.

I have very mixed feelings about the broader concept of MOOCs.  It would take an extraordinary effort for an online course, especially a MOOC, to match the quality of the best face-to-face courses.  But the reality is that few face-to-face courses are “the best.”  Although the dominant MOOC model seems to mimic much of the worst lecture courses in traditional universities, even the worst course is sometimes good enough especially when the alternative to a crappy, frustrating, and largely self-driven education is no education at all.