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I quickly learned one thing from my conversations with 

 faculty about their Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs):

Students don't follow directions -- including when they choose which MOOCs to enroll in.

Professor Chris Cramer's “Statistical Molecular Thermodynamics” MOOC has a list of prerequisites -- otherwise known "recommended background":

After his MOOC started, Cramer said, in the forums he discovered that a good number of participants didn't have the necessary background knowledge for the course.

I asked him what he thought of having to do such "remedial" teaching -- and how far he was willing to go to provide it.

He said it's not like the participants were being slackers. A lot of them had a science background -- just not his.

Cramer said he didn't change the main course material, but ended up spending a lot of time addressing the most common basic questions in the forums. He said their questions have caused him to think harder about how to explain basic concepts:

Education News

On Campus Blog

Alex Friedrich

Author

I quickly learned one thing from my conversations with University of Minnesota faculty about their Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs): Students don’t follow directions — including when they choose which MOOCs to enroll in. Professor Chris Cramer’s “Statistical Molecular Thermodynamics” MOOC has a list of prerequisites — otherwise known “recommended background”: One year of college-level…

What do you do when a MOOC student does not meet the prerequisites?

Go Deeper.

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