Jerônimo from Brazil asked me to create a podcast about my online learning experiences. Listen at this link and read the transcript here.
Transcript
Hello, I’m Pat Bowden. I started taking online courses or MOOCs in late 2012 and since then have finished nearly one hundred. There are also several I haven’t finished!
First of all, I’d like to explain what MOOCs are. The acronym MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Course. The early MOOCs often had enrollments of a hundred thousand students or more, so they truly were massive. The O for Open means that anyone can sign up, without needing particular school results or prerequisites for the course. Originally, MOOCs were free, although now some require a payment. The second O stands for Online and is just that: you connect to the internet and watch or download videos, read documents and answer questions online. The C in MOOC means Course. It simply means that the content covers certain topics and has an assessment component. It is not simply a series of YouTube videos.
When Did I Start Taking MOOCs?
I started taking MOOCs after retiring from the paid workforce. My husband told me about free courses available on Coursera and thought I might be interested in an Astronomy course coming up.
I happily enrolled and while I waited for it to start, tried out another course called Computers 101, which I found interesting. Meanwhile, the astronomy course was full of maths and physics which I hadn’t studied since high school nearly 40 years earlier. After the second week, I gave up trying to solve the quiz questions and just watched the videos about the universe and stars.
Although I didn’t pass the astronomy course, I enjoyed the opportunity to learn without having to buy books or pay tuition fees. I enrolled in other free courses and soon was learning about How to Reason and Argue, which amused my husband, and a course about nutrition. I have enjoyed learning so much, I have often been enrolled in several courses at the same time. My retirement plans of gardening and craft were neglected and over the last five years or so I have spent many hours at the computer. I have now completed ninety-eight MOOCs.
When I started taking MOOCs, I expected to spend some interesting times learning about things. Five years later, I write a weekly blog which you can find at www.onlinelearningsuccess.org. I have also proofread two best-selling books before publication, and have started earning part-time income with Class Central, which is a free website that helps thousands of visitors find online courses every day.
Stay Focused While Studying
I use various strategies to stay focused while I am learning. One strategy is to look forward to that sense of achievement when I finish a course. I have always been a person who prefers to finish things I start, but I don’t always manage to. Sometimes, just finishing each week of a course is an achievement. I’ll tell myself “I just have to watch these three more videos, then I can do the next quiz and that will be this week finished.”
Generally, I love to take advantage of free courses so I can improve my knowledge. The videos are usually interesting to watch and having questions to answer from time to time really helps keep me motivated. Some courses have in-video questions, while many have weekly quizzes. Getting feedback as you go along helps, more than simply reading the information in a book.
When I am doing my courses, I’ll often turn off things such as my email and social media, so I don’t get distracted. Keeping paper beside the computer helps, so if I think of something I need to do, I can write it down and remember it later. I always use headphones. I prefer to study without music but keeping the headphones on even when I’m not listening to videos helps me stay in the learning zone. But I also like to take frequent short breaks. I’ll walk around, have a drink of water, look out the window or go outside for a few minutes, then back into the learning groove. The trick is to keep the breaks short, otherwise your time will disappear and you haven’t achieved much.
Pomodoro Technique
If I’m having trouble getting started, the Pomodoro Technique is great. It was invented by an Italian, Francesco Cirillo. Basically, it’s a timer which you set for 25 minutes, then give yourself a 5-minute break. It’s a way to tell yourself that you only need to spend less than half an hour on your course. Then once you make that start, sometimes it’s easy to keep going and finish off a few more videos. In fact, the Pomodoro Technique is a great way to make a start on all kinds of projects.
A Useful Trait For Online Learners
Possibly the most useful trait for an online learner would be self-motivation. It helps if you can sit down and learn without needing your teacher or family pushing you to finish. If you need an extra helping hand, enlist someone to encourage you and help you set daily or weekly tasks. If you want to do it enough, you will find a way.
If you need to memorise lots of facts or terms for your course, try memory techniques such as flash cards, memory palace or association.
My favourite learning platforms also happen to be the largest learning platforms in the world, with millions of students enrolled in thousands of courses. I have done most of my courses through Coursera.
FutureLearn and edX are also great platforms. They have slight differences, but all use a combination of videos, readings, quiz or exam questions and sometimes assignments which can be assessed online by your classmates. Most of the questions are multiple choice. Courses can be fairly easy or quite challenging, so if you find a particular course is too basic or too hard, you may be able to find another that fills your needs. The great thing about free courses is that you can drop the course and try another without losing anything more than a bit of time.
Some Changes in Education
I’m not an education specialist, but I can see the internet playing a bigger role in formal education in the future. I see benefits for people not having to move away from home to pursue higher education. Isolation need not be a barrier to obtain a university degree, and online degrees are already being offered by some universities. One problem is with practical components of courses such as experiments. Perhaps with virtual reality technology, some of these hurdles could be overcome.
MOOCs have proved that people can learn many subjects using a device connected to the internet. At first, Massive Open Online Courses were completely free, but now, if you want to earn a certificate, you generally need to pay. Some courses also have the assessments and even some course content behind a paywall.
Some Favourite Courses
My absolute favourite course is Learning How to Learn provided by Coursera. If you want to try a course, this is a great one to start with, no matter what your interests or how young or old you are. It discusses the Pomodoro Technique that I mentioned before. It also has plenty of easy-to-understand information about how the brain works, improving your memory, and how to make the most of your talents. It is also the most popular online course in the world, with more than 2 million enrollments since it was released in 2014.
For anyone who wants to learn more about Climate Change, edX has Making Sense of Climate Science Denial. Not only does this comprehensive course explain the science behind observed changing weather patterns and rising sea levels, it also discusses why opinions are so divided on the subject.
Another interesting course is Genealogy: Researching Your Family Tree, provided by FutureLearn. It is packed with resources that you can use to trace your ancestors from many countries and teaches us about the growing field of DNA testing.
Thank you for listening today. Bye!
By Pat Bowden, published September 25, 2018.
