{"id":5276,"date":"2017-05-16T10:23:20","date_gmt":"2017-05-16T14:23:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/?p=5276"},"modified":"2017-05-16T10:23:20","modified_gmt":"2017-05-16T14:23:20","slug":"thoughts-on-sessions-versus-self-paced-on-coursera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/2017\/05\/thoughts-on-sessions-versus-self-paced-on-coursera\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts on Sessions versus Self-Paced On Coursera"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was asked by a colleague to summarize my thoughts on whether courses should be session based of self-paced on Coursera.<\/p>\n<p>It depends on a few things:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If there is low enrollment, self-paced works better because the forums feel less \u201cempty\u201d to a new student.  If you are starting a new scheduled session every few weeks and there are only a few hundred students &#8211; if can be problematic.<\/li>\n<li>One disadvantage of instructor paced is that there is a temptation to put \u201cevents\u201d at the end of classes &#8211; special instructor hangouts, etc etc.  We initially felt that Coursera Capstone courses needed this special attention for each session.   While these events are fun the first time a course is taught and when enrollment is high, after a while they are less fun &#8211; especially when they happen every 5-6 weeks and few students show up.   We moved toward having events for the \u201cwhole specialization\u201d and not just for students currently enrolled &#8211; that way when you have live or other special events you get the most benefit for the investment of faculty time.  My office hours work perfectly for this.  Every 8 or so weeks I meet my students in a bar, make a simple <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/playlist?list=PLlRFEj9H3Oj4qyq0OLZ76cMtUUgqUNtmz\" title=\"Office Hours\" target=\"_blank\">YouTube video<\/a> and send it around.  Reasonable effort &#8211; high visibility.<\/li>\n<li>A key to scheduled is the ability to \u201croll forward\u201d if a student drops out &#8211; Coursera is masterful at this.  There is a \u201csession\u201d but if you drop out, and a bit later a new session starts  you get an email that says &#8211; \u201cHey &#8211; we miss you &#8211; a new session is just starting and if you join now your homework results will roll forward to that session so you start part-way done\u201d.   Brilliant blend of self-paced and scheduled.\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In summary, we went from 100% scheduled 10 week courses 3x per year, to 100% self-paced with five 8-week courses, to this hybrid \u201cscheduled but with easy re-enrollment\u201d.  For high enrollment courses like our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.coursera.org\/specializations\/python\" target=\"_blank\">Python course<\/a> (1400 new students per week), the semi-scheduled is the best arrangement.  For my <a href=\"https:\/\/www.coursera.org\/learn\/insidetheinternet\" target=\"_blank\">Internet History<\/a> low-enrollment course (146 new students per week) &#8211; self paced seems to be the right balance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was asked by a colleague to summarize my thoughts on whether courses should be session based of self-paced on Coursera. It depends on a few things: If there is low enrollment, self-paced works better because the forums feel less \u201cempty\u201d to a new student. If you are starting a new scheduled session every few [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5276"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5282,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5276\/revisions\/5282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}