What do you do when a MOOC student does not meet the prerequisites?
Go Deeper.
Create an account or log in to save stories.
Like this?
Thanks for liking this story! We have added it to a list of your favorite stories.
I quickly learned one thing from my conversations with University of Minnesota faculty about their Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs):
Students don't follow directions -- including when they choose which MOOCs to enroll in.
Professor Chris Cramer's “Statistical Molecular Thermodynamics” MOOC has a list of prerequisites -- otherwise known "recommended background":
Turn Up Your Support
MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all.
One year of college-level physics. One year of college-level general chemistry. Differential calculus of multiple variables.
After his MOOC started, Cramer said, in the forums he discovered that a good number of participants didn't have the necessary background knowledge for the course.
He told me:
"Students don't give a damn what the prerequisites are. The course is free, so they sign up anyway."
I asked him what he thought of having to do such "remedial" teaching -- and how far he was willing to go to provide it.
He said it's not like the participants were being slackers. A lot of them had a science background -- just not his.
Cramer said he didn't change the main course material, but ended up spending a lot of time addressing the most common basic questions in the forums. He said their questions have caused him to think harder about how to explain basic concepts:
"It's kind of fun. And it's rare that I've had to say, 'I'm sorry, but there's too big a gap there.'"