[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.