[benrbray]

I tried to use edX for the first time recently to take a "food science" course, but was disappointed to see that they've resorted to the same dark patterns as Coursera and others, such as:

* Removing your access to course materials when the class is done, and disallowing access to past versions of the class.

* Pressuring you into joining as many courses as possible, due to fear of missing out. When you visit the site, every course says "Course began ($TODAY-5)" to make you feel like "wow, I got here just in time! I better sign up for everything!".

* Breaking courses into useless 2-minute chunks and constant unhelpful quizzes. I really just want to hear the lecturer speak for 20-30 minutes at a time uninterrupted, especially if I'm listening while doing dishes etc.

* An unsettling UI that feels less like it's about presenting information in a compact and/or digestible way and more like it's tracking my every move and waiting for an opportunity to pounce. Everything is a button or clickthrough menu that requires interaction.

Thankfully MIT OpenCourseWare still has plenty of lecture videos / course materials available. But I'm quite afraid for the future.

[wodenokoto]

> Breaking courses into useless 2-minute chunks and constant unhelpful quizzes. I really just want to hear the lecturer speak for 20-30 minutes at a time uninterrupted, especially if I'm listening while doing dishes etc.

I disagree. If you’re doing dishes you are not taking a college level course. One of the best things about digital courses is that you don’t have to spend an hour zoning out to a professor talking and then spend a day doing exercises, but the two can be intertwined and knowledge can be cemented.

Of course it can be done terribly. But the best online courses I’ve taken have split things up into small chunks with relevant exercises.

[benrbray]

> I disagree.

That's something we have in common :). My disagreement spans a few dimensions:

* I've already been through school. An undergraduate and graduate degree already taught me how to learn. I have good habits, and I know how to buckle down and study when needed. For me, I find that having something to do with my hands while listening to a lecture actually helps me stay more focused on the topic. Before and after watching, I like to review the slides, do some reading, and take notes.

* I already have degrees. I'm not looking for extra credential. I'm just looking to learn something new from someone qualified to teach me who can filter out what's important and what's not. It would be nice to have the opportunity to listen without necessarily jumping through all the hoops of a normal college class.

* Sometimes I already have background knowledge that overlaps with the course content. In these cases, it's really frustrating when a course won't let me skip around and focus on the topics that I want to learn. The quickest way to get me to drop an online course is to make me sit through lecture content that I've already learned before somewhere else.

* Different students learn in different ways. You might like that the frequent quiz interruptions hold you accountable. That's great! For me, I don't find it too helpful. Usually the mid-lecture quizzes are simple "are you listening?" questions that don't really test your deep understanding. I'd rather go through a set of exercises all at once after listening to the lecture.

Basically, I see no reason online courses can't be structured to give us more choices about how we want to consume the content!

[dataflow]

Nothing wrong with what you want, but I'm thinking you might not be the target audience?

[myhrvold]

A target audience is a good broader point about MOOCs and online education. (I took edX courses during the "glory days" of 2012 and 2013 -- and also tested out Udemy, Coursera, and Udacity at the time.)

The one-size-fits-most nature of online education goes against the "customize your education at scale to learn" which was an earlier anticipated advantage about MOOCs. Specifically, adaptive learning and being able to accommodate a variety of learning behaviors and styles. "Learn at your own pace, in your own way, on your own time but still within bounds to the rest of the class" kind of thing.

I remember when Stanford launched online CS courses in the mid 2010s, that it was thought they'd have the best of both worlds and their in-person, offline course offerings wouldn't be affected. (Diluted down to the lowest common denominator of student, which now included online learners who weren't Stanford students per se.) Well, over time, turns out double duty-ing course material for online and the "regular" classes crept into all education for instructors. Which meant the courses with online equivalents became easier across the board. Thus, the target audience for everything shifted.

Again, with acknowledged intentionality, I don't really have an issue with this (which you could crassly summarize as "dumbing down" the course offerings for convenience's sake) -- except that from my vantage point it was an unforeseen consequence of part of the online and MOOC push.

Obviously, I benefited from online courses in my mid 20s and so I look at their rise with nostalgia and through a rosier lens than many. However, I also can't help but think that they ended up being not quite what was promised at the outset, which was better targeting in addition to expanded educational access around the world. Especially for students who thought they'd signed up for the more challenging materials and didn't want to be part of a grand new experiment.

Interesting that MIT OpenCourseWare will outlast edX, which for a few years truly did look like it was the future of university level education and beyond.

[dataflow]

Yeah, makes sense. Just to clarify something though, I didn't mean it in terms of "dumbing down", but rather "intended to be taken like a college course". As in, with the same amount of attention and effort dedicated to it as you would "full-time" in a college setting. Ergo, people who are looking to do dishes, jog outside, etc. in the middle of it would not be the target audience of MOOCs.

I actually see MIT's OCW as different from MOOCs in this regard, since that was intended as "here's the material we teach, use it at your leisure" (e.g., feel free to wash dishes in the middle...), whereas edX/Coursera/etc. were (as I see it) intended as "here's a 'college-equivalent' course you can take remotely; we need to assume you'll treat it similarly and in return we think it'd give you similar understanding of the material as a college student would get in a classroom".

[truth_]

Exactly. When I find overlapping content in MOOCs, it becomes very annoying. I don't want to miss out a valuable insight I might gain listening to a different instructor speaking for a different point-of-view. The RoI is quite low. But it has happened in the past, so I don't want to skip overlapping content. So listening to it while tidying up or cleaning the desk makes sense.

And for new content, I never watch lectures with other things. I never did. And I still find 2-4 minutes videos annoying as hell.

[edgeform]

> "This product that isn't aimed at me isn't aimed at *me*, and that makes me stamp my feet in anger."

> Sometimes I already have background knowledge that overlaps with the course content.

I used to think like you, all the time. "Oh, I already know this." and while I'm sitting there being all smug and self-satisfied that I'm the smartest person in the room I realized:

* The content is good for a refresher. "Background" knowledge is just that, you're admitting you want to hear an expert speak on a subject yet want to throw out what they have to say because you "already know it from before this class".

* The content often provides context. Just like the "Previously on..." segment of TV shows that will recap specific plot points so the viewer understands the events of the new episode they're about to watch, discussing what you term "prior knowledge" will help contextualize the new content that you don't understand properly.

> Basically, I see no reason online courses can't be structured to give us more choices about how we want to consume the content!

OK, but that's not edX/Corsera's job lol

They don't have to cater to every single whim of every type of education personality. It's all well and fine that you, a multiple degree holder, would love to skip around content that you find boring/tedious/whatever while saying you want "someone qualified to teach me who can filter out what's important and what's not".

Like it or not, these websites are just simply not aimed at you, a large-brained Multiple Degree Holder. They're aimed at people who are behind you in education.

[lmohseni]

> If you’re doing dishes you are not taking a college level course.

Sometimes I like to listen to a lecture 2 or 3 or even more times. Sometimes I like to listen to a lecture when I'm going for a run. Sometimes I like to listen while I'm doing chores. Seems presumptuous to say I'm "not taking the course" when we know that learning styles vary so much between individuals.

[itsoktocry]

>Sometimes I like to listen to a lecture 2 or 3 or even more times.

YouTube has a ton of lectures, for free, that you can view and/or listen to in this manner.

But doing dishes during a lecture seems antithetical to what they are trying to achieve with remote learning, and isn't the use case they should be catering to.

[wpietri]

The notion that there's a single concept of the purpose of remote learning and a single concept of how students learn is exactly the problem.

It baffles me that people expect to take a process optimized for a neurotypical 20-year-old subsidized enough to devote 100% time to study and apply it to everybody else on the planet. I get how physical universities ended up the way they did. But software is infinitely soft and the internet is basically everywhere. Insisting that everybody must learn the same way a bunch of well-off youth did in 1950 is grossly exclusionary and wasteful.

In short, I don't care what the universities are trying to achieve with remote learning. I care what the students succeed in achieving. Let's focus on that.

[itsoktocry]

>Insisting that everybody must learn the same way a bunch of well-off youth did in 1950 is grossly exclusionary and wasteful.

No one is saying "everyone must learn the same way". They are teaching a specific way, and are under no obligation to ensure that "your" unique needs are met.

I mean, you say yourself there's no single concept of how students learn. So maybe explain how you'd expect them to to do it?

There are all kinds of models out there. Udemy, Coursera, good old recorded lectures on YouTube. Find what works for you and use it.

[shkkmo]

> But doing dishes during a lecture seems antithetical to what they are trying to achieve.

They are trying to exclude large swathes of the population?

It is extremely common for people with ADD to focus better when they keep the part of their brain that distracts them busy. In college I folded origami in lectures so that my brain wouldn't go off on tangents that would lead to me tuning out significant sections of the lecture.

Some people combat the tangents by being busy, and some people embrace the tangents (which can be valuable for understanding) by listening to lectures multiple times.

[itsoktocry]

>It is extremely common for people with ADD to focus better when they keep the part of their brain that distracts them busy.

They should cater to those people as opposed to other people for whom bite-sized learning works better? When did we become a society that expects everyone else to cater to our specific needs? No one is being "excluded".

If that's the way you need to learn, fantastic. There are options out there for you. It wasn't that long ago when none of this existed.

[shkkmo]

> They should cater to those people as opposed to other people for whom bite-sized learning works better?

I didn't say that. The claim was made that learning in this method is incompatible with taking a college level course. I was demonstrating how that attitude is both blatantly false and exclusionary.

> When did we become a society that expects everyone else to cater to our specific needs?

The value of accessibility and inclusivity in education has long been recognized. Why does online learning get a pass from considering this?

Edit: There is no problem with one person saying "I learn better this way" and someone else saying ”I learn better this other way". The problem is when people say "the way you learn is inferior and not suited to college level material" because that is exclusionary.

[kesselvon]

In undergrad I'd listen to lectures while doing chores all the time, especially when the concepts are theoretical and it's more about just listening to the information.

It won't work for a calculus lecture, but for a lot of topics it works just fine.

[benrbray]

It's not really catering to disable a feature. You can call it "audit" mode and offer no credential.

[jhbadger]

The problem with "audit" mode is that it is more than just not getting a credential (which I like most people who already have their educations don't need) but that often you can't take the online exams either. I still want to know if I've learned the material properly!

[ncallaway]

Sure they could do that. You're essentially asking them to implement an additional feature to handle a new use case—a totally reasonable thing to ask.

But it seems like it's really a stretch to say "it's a dark pattern to not implement this feature that covers my use case". If not implementing a desired feature is a "dark pattern", then I'm not really sure I know what constitutes a dark pattern

[benrbray]

The behavior I'm describing is how the website used to work. The put in extra work to prevent users like me from using it this way.

[nextaccountic]

> But doing dishes during a lecture seems antithetical to what they are trying to achieve with remote learning, and isn't the use case they should be catering to.

It seems, but it isn't. The inflexible way they structure their courses is just a failure to accommodate to different learning styles. And it's okay - they don't need to be everything for everyone - but it's disappointing.

[squeaky-clean]

What works best for me is to watch the lecture multiple times with different amounts of intensity/focus. Listening to a lecture while on a walk or doing other errands is a fantastic primer for when I rewind the lecture and watch it again with my pen and notebook in front of me.

I picked this up from Mortimer J. Adler's "How to Read a Book". There's lots of other techniques discussed in it, but the idea of "skim the content first to know what's coming up, so you have an idea of what each chapter (or lecture) is building towards" improved my retention massively and works well for things that aren't just books.

[GrinningFool]

> If you’re doing dishes you are not taking a college level course

Relatively mindless tasks to occupy my hands frees up my brain to focus. If I'm not doing dishes, I'm doodling or playing with a coin or, or...

[nobrains]

Well, it depends on the kind of a learner you are. Some learners prefer to listen to long lectures and some short (and some might prefer interactivities, and others might prefer one-way communication). This is where personalized learning comes in, which is something in its infancy and being explored by academicians and especially companies focused on e-learning delivery. (I work in tech at an online / blended learning higher education institution).

Now this comment by OP (benrbray) and you (wodenokoto) gives me an idea that courses can be designed in a way that the learner can mention how much hands-free time they have to spare now, depending on which the platform can hold off any interactivities / quizzes until then (or something like that), to make the learning process more personalized.

[whimsicalism]

The problem with this "personalized learning" approach is that, outside of MIT OCW, everyone seems to have skipped implementing the normal, long lecture in front of blackboard to watch method straight to interactive laden content.

[yarky]

> If you’re doing dishes you are not taking a college level course.

It sounds like you assume everyone suffers ADHD and that's no the cause, not everybody learns the same way and the dish washing strategy always worked for me in college.

[whimsicalism]

> If you’re doing dishes you are not taking a college level course. One of the best things about digital courses is that you don’t have to spend an hour zoning out to a professor talking

Strong disagree - as you point out in the next sentence, slightly distracted is the standard model of consumption for in person.

[ArtWomb]

Not surprised a cooking class doesn't lend itself to an easy online port! But the lecture content from Harvard's Science and Cooking with El Bulli's Ferran Adria is still as you mention freely available online for all to enjoy. I recently had a free week pass to Masterclass. And though I found the content more entertaining than enlightening (How to be a Boss with Anna Wintour). There is something to be said about educational content that is given a Hollywood production budget. I think it was always inevitable institutes of higher education would seek auxiliary revenue streams from MOOCs. And an influx of capital could result in lecture videos that are Netflix quality, and that enjoy near 100% levels of retention ;)

Science and Cooking: A Dialogue | Lecture 1 (2010)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9av8-lhJS8

[benrbray]

Those are actually exactly the lectures I watched before attempting to join the very disappointing EdX course by the same professors :).

The lectures on YouTube were evening lectures meant to summarize each week of class, but the actual in-person students learned more about the actual chemistry involved, and did guided experiments to test different properties of food. I was hoping the EdX course by the same professors would give me an approximation that experience, but I was really disappointed. Technically there's a lot of good information still there, but the main problems were that the lectures were split into 2-minute chunks and the EdX UI constantly gets in the way of actually absorbing the content. I decided to buy a couple books on the topic instead.

[drran]

Watching of a movie about agent 007 will not make you a super spy.

To learn something, you need to watch a lecture, then receive a task, perform the task and provide a result, then receive feedback, and, finally, learn from the feedback.

Harvard video lectures are just another form of TV. They are mostly useless without Harvard.

[turadg]

This is a dilution of the meaning of "dark pattern". darkpatterns.org which coined the term (and Wikipedia cites) says, "When you use websites and apps, you don’t read every word on every page - you skim read and make assumptions. If a company wants to trick you into doing something, they can take advantage of this by making a page look like it is saying one thing when it is in fact saying another."

I don't see any of that in your observations. Moreover, what you attribute to some nefarious purpose is better explained by effective curriculum design. I haven't used edX lately but I worked at Coursera and I can tell you that the people who make that product have a passion to support learning in the world.

* Removing access to course materials: it's a course, not a content library. When you can access it anytime, you're less likely to do the work of learning. You also won't be part of a learning cohort, which is a valuable learning activity.

* Encouraging you to sign up for courses: this is a problem? Wouldn't someone who wants you to learn encourage you to sign up for courses? "Course began ($TODAY - 5)" that would be deceptive. Are you claiming that edX or Coursera does this?

* Breaking courses into chunks and quizzes. How the heck is this deceptive? This design decision is backed by learning science. Listening while doing dishes does not get you the best learning outcomes; it's a university-level course not a podcast.

* "Unsettling UI" "opportunity to pounce" I really don't know what to make of this one.

[light_hue_1]

I think it's funny that you mention learning science. Actually, all of these patterns go against everything we know about teaching anyone anything.

* Removing access to course materials is horrible! I use old courses and books for reference all the time. When you can access the course any time, you refresh your learning. That's the key to long term retention.

* FOMO to force people to work at your pace rather than their pace is just as terrible. We know that students working at their pace, with encouragement, is what really works. Pushing people into courses when they aren't ready is terrible.

* Constant quizzes are a lazy version of what we know works, which is engagement like https://icampus.mit.edu/projects/teal/ Yes, quizzes are part of it, but a small part, the focus is on making courses interactive with meaningful work instead of boring 1-out-of-n choices. Making such courses is hard, so they take the easy and boring way out.

* If users find the UI unsettling, like it's too focused on tracking and too little on actual learning, that's a legitimate and important complaint. Education is not about getting arbitrarily high scores on some random online quizzes. You want people to actually learn something for the long run.

It really looks like edX and Coursera are taking the exam-driven horrors that are being inflicted on K-12 students all the time and translating them to the web. This is no way to teach. And you can see that with their extremely poor retention rates.

[cstejerean]

EdX definitely shows “Starts $TODAY” on courses with self paced start any time schedules. I know it does this and it still gets me every time by creating this false sense of urgency that I must enroll today lest I miss the opportunity.

[musicale]

It's the false time urgency trick, aka "today only!"

Similar to the false inventory scarcity trick "only 1 left at this price!"

Note to MIT and Harvard: when you start adopting the deceptive sales tricks of used-car salesmen and dubious infomercials, you're probably doing it wrong.

[threatofrain]

> Removing access to course materials: it's a course, not a content library. When you can access it anytime, you're less likely to do the work of learning. You also won't be part of a learning cohort, which is a valuable learning activity.

Uh huh.

[bobobob420]

"but I worked at Coursera and I can tell you that the people who make that product have a passion to support learning in the world."

lol, no one will take your points seriously with your clear bias. Coursera is utter shit and it is sad to see edX go down the same path. I guess because the people at Coursera are passionate it means the business does not have a desire to make money as much as a bank and thus the original OP's points are not valid.

[benrbray]

> I haven't used edX lately but I worked at Coursera and I can tell you that the people who make that product have a passion to support learning in the world.

I don't doubt that there are people working at EdX / Coursera with a passion for education. I just think maybe these companies are moving in a direction that is at odds with the goal of providing free education, everywhere, to everyone, at any stage in their life.

I enrolled in some of the earliest MOOCs. Sebastian Thrun's original ai-class.com which now redirects to Udacity. I took the first iteration of Andrew Ng's "Machine Learning" on Coursera, as well as Geoffrey Hinton's original NNML course. Back then, everything was open. Course materials were shared freely, and the archives were available for years after the course concluded. There was an autograder for coding assignments that didn't get in your way too much.

Slowly, more and more roadblocks were put in place.

What was your experience like at Coursera? Did you get a chance to see how decisions about the UI and structure of courses were made? Did you get a sense of how much the marketing / business side of things interfered with the education side?

> better explained by effective curriculum design.

For who? Maybe these sites have created a product that works well for a certain niche of people, and they've hyper-optimized for that. Great. But that's not really the dream we all had for it ten years ago.

Like I said in a sibling comment: I've already been through school, and already know my own learning process. I find that the practices Coursera / EdX actively get in the way of my learning.

> darkpatterns.org which coined the term

Language changes. Most people include in their meaning of "dark pattern" things like "artificially restricting you from performing actions that the website is fully capable of performing, with dubious or justification or malicious intent".

I don't think EdX is malicious, just that their reasons for restricting usage of course materials are dubious, and conflict with their stated mission.

> Removing access to course materials: it's a course, not a content library.

Why can't it be a content library? I learn a lot at libraries!

> When you can access it anytime, you're less likely to do the work of learning.

This structure helps some people, sure. But some people like me are not full-time students. Some weeks I have lots of time to dig in, other weeks I don't have time to even watch a lecture. Moreover, I'm learning for myself, not for credentials, so why should I care what a website thinks of my progress?

> "Course began ($TODAY - 5)" that would be deceptive. Are you claiming that edX or Coursera does this?

I don't have definitive proof, but every time I visit the EdX or Coursera sites it just so happens that the exact course I was searching for started within a week of the current date. Maybe I'm being paranoid.

> "Unsettling UI" "opportunity to pounce" I really don't know what to make of this one.

This was mostly a joke :)

> Breaking courses into chunks and quizzes. How the heck is this deceptive? This design decision is backed by learning science. Listening while doing dishes does not get you the best learning outcomes; it's a university-level course not a podcast.

Again, I'm not a student. I trust my own learning process, which is impeded by constant quizzes. I'm doing this to broaden my knowledge. I don't have time to enroll in a college class, but I have time to listen to a few lectures when doing dishes, and read a couple book chapters per week.

Coursera and others are technically capable of opening up their service to this use case -- it doesn't cost them anything -- so why not do it?

In a certain sense, online education is thriving! There are tons of video lectures on YouTube available for free and I can easily pirate any textbook I want to with a quick Google search. It's just that Coursera / EdX / etc don't really fit into that for me. I really wish they did.

[pyuser583]

“Dark pattern” is getting way too popular.

[chaosbutters314]

why is food science in quotes? you wouldnt put physics course in quotes. As someone that works as an engineer in the food industry, our work is just as rigorous as other fields. When working with vendors that support different domains, they always get excited to work with us since we have some of the craziest and most challenging problems that are not straight forward. While the work we do may not be critical to saving the world and solving some critical problem, it does make a difference in the grand scheme of things.

[benrbray]

I didn't mean it that way at all. They were intended more like title-quotes than belittling-quotes. Everything I have read / watched on the topic tells me that food science is a really deep and interesting topic that demands expertise in many different areas of chemistry, physics, and engineering all at once! It's why I was so interested to take a course in the first place!

[whimsicalism]

Science and cooking is well known as a blowoff course @Harvard.

[wrycoder]

Food engineering, maybe. It's not science or even applied science.

[odessacubbage]

>useless 2-minute chunks this is what keeps turning me off of moocs tbh. so many seem like they're designed specifically for people with no attention span... and no one else.

[maayank]

> * Breaking courses into useless 2-minute chunks and constant unhelpful quizzes. I really just want to hear the lecturer speak for 20-30 minutes at a time uninterrupted, especially if I'm listening while doing dishes etc.

That's actually one of my favorite things when taking online courses...

[benrbray]

That's cool, do what works for you! I just wish I had the option to disable the quizzes/breaks and see it all in one go. I personally like to watch talks / lectures while I'm doing dishes, but I can't click on the quizzes with my soapy hands.

I'm frustrated that tools that are meant to be empowering actually prevent people from customizing the course content to suit their own learning style / constraints.

[4ec0755f5522]

The pushback you're getting on this is.... I mean i struggle to find the words. If someone wants to not stare at a screen during a lecture this is 100% ok and I literally cannot fathom the idea that someone is "doing it wrong" if they do not.

If someone does this and they don't absorb the material they..... watch the lecture again in a more focused manner. It really is ok!

[geodel]

You have made excellent points. So many of these courses feel that they are out to make one feel like shit if they decide to do free audit instead of paying. And this is despite telling multiple times the one is not interested in certificates which now can be attached on Linkedin.

[xtiansimon]

> “Breaking courses into useless 2-minute chunks and constant unhelpful quizzes.“

In my previous experience this was determined by the instructor(s). Is this no longer the case? (Somehow determined by the platform?)

[hackermailman]

OCW started doing the same annoying 10m chunks with their scholar versions but so far have always still provided the full unedited lecture as an option.

[threatofrain]

> MIT OpenCourseWare still has plenty of lecture videos / course materials available.

Hmm, I'd disagree. For example, Analysis 1 is a very desired course for many technical majors. Go look at OpenCourseWare's offerings for Analysis 1, perhaps peruse some of the videos.

Then go look for other desired courses -- missing content is characteristic and not the exception.

[hackermailman]

For analysis lectures this guy is hard to find in the Youtube algorithm but has the best analysis lectures you'll ever find https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL22w63XsKjqxqaF-Q7MSy... many go well with Terence Tao's book or whatever analysis text you're currently doing.

As for OCW it is missing a lot of content that you can find if you look at the class page on stellar for prev semesters, for whatever reasons they're not allowed on there but you can still find full lectures (until they lockdown that access too)

[benrbray]

I guess I see it from this perspective: I don't start my search for learning materials at OCW, but I often end up there through a Google search! Sometimes, it's for a surprisingly advanced / specific topic, too.

[redgrange]

Maybe their internal research shows significant benefits to the short chunks of lecture content.

[kilroywashere]

something many don't know: you can torrent these courses.