4-6 MOOC Tips Part 2 – Looking More Deeply Into Quality Learning

The easiest way to decide whether an online learning experience is right for you is to check out an online ranking site. As I’ve mentioned before, I personally like to use classcentral.com. It has a smart way of comparing MOOCs across different platforms by letting you see people’s reviews. Fun game-like aspects, and easy to follow course structure, and thoughtfully designed quizzes, tests, and projects are obviously important in any online course. But here are some other valuable MOOC making elements that can make a difference in how well you learn and how much you enjoy the learning process. Research has shown that if you watch a professor on a video for about 30 seconds, you can get a very good sense of how effective that professor actually is. Amazingly, even as little as six seconds can allow you to form an effective snap judgement, in part based on emotional micro expressions that are too fast to truly register. Look for approachable, encouraging, fun professors who can simplify the material and make the hard stuff look easy. It may seem obvious that all professors should be this way, but they aren’t. It turns out that when we understand something through a metaphor, we’re putting into action the same neural circuitry that we use to understand the in-depth concept itself. Traditional teachers sometimes believe that teaching through metaphor dumbs things down. Smart teachers, however, realize that metaphor and analogy can help students get an initial grasp of the materials much more quickly. Good online courses often use lots of vivid metaphors and analogies. Incidentally, if you yourself can come up with a metaphor, the sillier the better, it can often help you understand even difficult concepts like those in advanced calculus. Did you know that equations themselves are actually just metaphors? That’s according to Emanuel Derman, one of the world’s greatest mathematical modelers. Whenever a metaphor breaks down, throw it away and then just get a new one. Online materials with humor can help activate addictive dopamine circuits of pleasure. It also provides the mental equivalent of a sort of ledge to temporarily rest on and regain your breath when you’re climbing an intellectual mountain. In my experience, humor’s much more important in online courses than in face to face classes. If you have a competitive choice between a class that presents the material and a class that is funny while it presents the material, which one are you going to take? Look for well done visuals that relate directly to the material. A little clip art is understandable, but it shouldn’t all just be clip art. If the instructor can’t take the time to help develop illustrations, it tells you a lot about how invested that instructor and their institution are in the course. On the other hand, just slapping a complex textbook image on the screen also just doesn’t cut it. People learn differently from videos than they do from books. Complex images need to appear part by part. You’ll learn better in the same amount of time if you’re not hit visually with everything all at once. If intelligently done and not just done for style’s sake, good editing keeps your attentional circuits in gear while adding to your comprehension. The best MOOCs showcase the talent of video editors and instructional designers. There will undoubtedly be many other approaches to MOOC making that you find very helpful. Please head on over to the discussion forums and let us know what you think some of these best approaches are. Please tell us some of your favorite MOOCs and why you like them.