For two weeks, I have been taking a Nutrition and Health: Macronutrients and Overnutrition class on edX – https://courses.edx.org/courses/course-v1:WageningenX+NUTR101x+2T2019/course/ and Machine Learning Interview Preparation on Udacity – https://www.udacity.com/course/machine-learning-interview-prep–ud1001
Overall, the setup of the courses on edX and Udacity were pretty similar, with the instructors’ style and presence within the course.
With edX, there was a high instructor presence within the course and the instructor was always present and visible in the short video contents. This is very important: the density of the sequences in a MOOC is very different to that of a face-to-face course; in a MOOC the sequences must be short (Epelboin, Pomerol & Thoury, 2015). The instructor in this course used great and eye-catching tools in the learning videos in order to create backdrops that went along with the topics the instructor was talking about. I really enjoyed this because they all looked pretty neat and they were not boring. It was interesting to see them all in each video. Sometimes if I am in a quiet area, I do not like listening to the instructor videos out loud for others to hear. I really liked how in this edX Nutrition and Health course there was an option to mute the instructor’s voice since he had the exact script typed up next to the videos so you could read what he was saying in them.
The edX instructor also created recap videos in order to view or read before moving on to the next learning module. These were very efficient and helpful since they pointed out the key concepts within that module. Within each learning module, there were also multiple choice questions to see if you were understanding the content. Students are also able to download the video files and text transcripts to save on their computers and watch them at another time. There was a question and answer (Q & A) section with frequently asked questions by other students, and the instructor posted his answers to all of them with links for other extra helpful references. I really liked this section because I always like to see if someone else had the same questions as I did.
The nice thing about this course is that all the topics within the course are posted ahead of time so each and every student has the ability to work at their own pace, either taking their time or working ahead if they would like. I personally love to be on track or always ahead of the game, so I really liked how this instructor had all the material already posted for the whole course. When I started this course in the beginning of September, I only had until September 27th, 2019 to purchase the unlimited access, otherwise I would lose all access to the course by November 8th. Access is $99 in order to be able to get the verified certificate of completion at the end of the course. Another neat thing and way to save some money if purchasing the access is that Rakuten gives 5% cashback on the total spent. If you activate this, it will automatically be added to your Rakuten account and each month you are able to transfer your cash back into your bank or receive a check in the mail. At the end of the course, the edX instructor included additional learning materials for anyone who wanted to continue to further expand their knowledge on the topics.
Machine Learning Interview Preparation on Udacity has a similar layout to the Nutrition and Health course on edX. A good thing about this Udacity course is that there is no charge and it is completely free to take. This course provides many resources in order to prepare you for any upcoming interviews. There is a forum with common questions and technical strategies that could be used or needed in any type of interview. The Udacity course also has unlimited access to mock interviews to better help prepare potential candidates going into an interview. There are many interactive quizzes in order to test your knowledge to find out if you are following along with what is being taught.
The Udacity course developer gives many video introductions in the beginning of each lesson and throughout most of them, so I would say there is a pretty high instructor presence, but not as much as the edX course that is discussed above. This Machine Learning Interview Preparation Udacity course is self-paced and you are able to complete the course whenever you want and take as long as you need.
The instructor for this course makes it interesting and not boring and dragging by having many different videos with a ton of different people and real life examples in them. The real life examples consist of more than one person “acting out” mock interviews and more, and it keeps it interesting. The only thing I did not like about this course is that on the main course page, there are no helpful resources and links like the edX course, which I thought was more helpful. It did give some good advice and links though on another module in the course on interviewing advice, phone screening and more.
Overall, MOOC classes are great and a game changer. Everything needed for self-paced learning is right there in the computer; the cost of delivering it to students is miniscule (Khan, 2012). There is no more need for expensive textbooks and waste of paper. I know the two classes I took for two weeks, Nutrition and Health: Macronutrients and Overnutrition class on edX, and Machine Learning Interview Preparation on Udacity are different topics, but I personally liked the set up of the course on edX better than the Udacity one. It gave more resources to look at, the videos were more interesting, and the instructor presence was high. I personally think the MOOC videos in the edX course were more beneficial and interesting. The setup of this course just appealed to me more, had more interesting content and interesting MOOC learning videos overall.
References:
Khan, S. (2012). The one world school house: education reimagined. London: Hodder & Stoughton.
Pomerol, J.-C., Epelboin, Y., & Thoury, C. (2015). MOOCs. doi: 10.1002/9781119081364
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