Last weekend we attended a concert. I have been to great concerts—some with amazing music, others that featured the flavor of the month hit bands. This one was different. It was emotional, nostalgic and, in a way, naïve.
A small sandwich board sign was in front of the parking lot. On it, under a hand-drawn arrow, was stuck a 8.5×11 sheet of paper: “Bulgarian Rock Legends.” A venue that typically hosts sessions like Vision Stewards, Active Imagination and Caring for Your Soul, was the stage, on which four of the biggest rock stars I grew up with were going to entertain the two hundred or so Bulgarians, who live in Seattle.
The four musicians were from four different bands. When Bulgaria was still communist, these bands represented the tiny ray of hope that while isolated and controlled, talent could still find a way to move us. In the exhilarating years of transition, they were showing up at demonstrations, giving voice to the wide range of emotions—hope, empowerment, freedom. And then for the years since I moved away, when I went back to visit, their music would be what I recognized and connected with, despite the broad range of new pop, rock and the intellectually despised, but quite successful, “chalga” music.
And here they were – four guys in Seattle. Two of them in their late 60s, the other two a decade younger. Each of them from a different band, taking turns performing each others’ songs, the same songs that 20-30 years ago made them not just stars but symbols. Their US tour like a mission of visiting the troops, injecting patriotism and hope that we still belong not only to Bulgaria but together, in the cheesy meditation hall in the middle of nowhere.
They were great. We relived our youth, they relived theirs. Some of us cried, they mostly smiled. They seemed to enjoy themselves, joking about their age and their “limited” body of work.
I don’t often allow myself to admit that I miss Bulgaria. It is a self-preservation strategy, an emotional cop-out that makes me feel less vulnerable to regrets. When I do miss it, I try to remember that nostalgia is fake. And I tried to do that at the concert. I caught myself thinking that these past-their-prime stars from a country most people have never heard of, with their old hits (the Poplars from the title) that with age have acquired the innocent sound of “classic” rock, seemed quite naïve, as if their art never evolved past the barricades of our young democracy. On the other hand, their songs might be as dusty as my connections to Bulgaria, but they still meant more than Adele and U2 and anyone in between, put together.
The Unfulfilled Promise of MOOCs
23 MayI learned to outline my thoughts like that in the analog American University in Bulgaria. Still waiting for a better/digital way to do so.
And there lies the problem with MOOCs — it is a great way to enrich your knowledge, to broaden your intellectual foundation and explore subjects adjacent to your field or that you have a personal passion about. What MOOCs fail to do is inspire the initial desire to learn, or offer a straightforward path to a comprehensive base of knowledge.
First, there is the issue of content. At the time of this post Coursera lists 374 classes available from a long list of colleges and universities. While the number is impressive, and there is a pretty good varierty of content — from Introductory Physics, to Growing Old Around the Globe. What is missing is a path —what do I do when I finish my Intro to Psychology class? Would there be a follow up course that will help me delve deeper into a subject I loved? EdX, which is a MOOC platform funded by Harvard and MIT, offers only 51 classes. Wouldn’t it make sense to have some standards that identify where the class fits within a full curriculum, so that you can chart your own path? And how do you determine which class is worth your time and which isn’t? How do you know what you do not know?
Second, the course may be massive and open, but it sure does not feel like there is a community around it. By the social media standards of today, courses are using a “first generation” technology. It does not help that each course brands the tools they are using with their own creative names and each has slightly different capabilities. One class I signed up for sent me to three different websites for the homework, for the lectures and for the discussions. I tried this class exactly once, for 10 minutes. Instead of innovating on top of what is available in terms of community and social networking technologies, MOOCs seem to be relying on the most basic of these technologies.
And here is the third challenge. This kind of learning requires very little commitment and investment. That is what makes the courses attractive but it also what makes dropping out painless and guilt-free (and guilt is a big motivator for me). It does not help that you cannot see ratings of previous classes or the professors that teach them so that you know what to expect — we did not have that system of reviews in our analog colleges either, but the real social interactions we had in the dorms and between classes told us which professor to avoid and which class was a drag. So I blindly sign up for mildly interesting classes, knowing fully well I would stick with one.
Helping people find the right classes and encouraging them to stick with their choices will be key if MOOCs want to become a valid educational option. What motivates us is knowing that we are investing our time, even if we do not invest our money, in something meaningful. And this is where the MOOCs fail — they are intellectually titillating, but not that meaningful. Yet.
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Tags: Coursera, EdX, MOOC