Article with an interesting graphical depiction of the participation rates over time on Coursera.
2 Comments
andflywrite
on March 10, 2013 at 6:44 pm
A lot to learn about what makes for participation in new forms of learning. Hopefully analysis of this type will note that online use of “what’s out there” is a broad spectrum of activities.
The author has his categories of “type of use” or “type of users”, but some of them don’t necessarily sound like distinct categories.
Which would make sense to me, because there’s probably more use that doesn’t fit into a distinct category, than use that does fit. Or if it fits a category, it might be misleading or an inadequate reduction of a much more complex activity.
Trying to make distinctions in usage, or users, may well be something that data point gathering and elaborate computer intelligence provides better than our “human” attempts at taxonomy. And then, would that make sense to us, or be valuable to us?
Maybe only in terms of outcomes. User Cat A had better “end results” than User Cat B, even though we can’t explain in human terms what the difference is between the categories?
(as you know, a graphic can be turned into an active link too…pretty easily…so I did here just for fun. =^) Like when a cursor rollover opens a new graphic…has snarky humor possibilities… )
A lot to learn about what makes for participation in new forms of learning. Hopefully analysis of this type will note that online use of “what’s out there” is a broad spectrum of activities.
The author has his categories of “type of use” or “type of users”, but some of them don’t necessarily sound like distinct categories.
Which would make sense to me, because there’s probably more use that doesn’t fit into a distinct category, than use that does fit. Or if it fits a category, it might be misleading or an inadequate reduction of a much more complex activity.
Trying to make distinctions in usage, or users, may well be something that data point gathering and elaborate computer intelligence provides better than our “human” attempts at taxonomy. And then, would that make sense to us, or be valuable to us?
Maybe only in terms of outcomes. User Cat A had better “end results” than User Cat B, even though we can’t explain in human terms what the difference is between the categories?
(as you know, a graphic can be turned into an active link too…pretty easily…so I did here just for fun. =^) Like when a cursor rollover opens a new graphic…has snarky humor possibilities… )
to be fair, the author explains more about his categories here:
http://wp.me/pjDoV-10g in the first part of his article.