Proposal: LW courses

post by iarwain1 · 2014-03-05T16:18:09.867Z · LW · GW · Legacy · 10 comments

Contents

10 comments

For a long time I have tried to study things on my own, at my own pace. But it was always an uphill struggle against strong akrasia issues, and eventually I came to the conclusion that the only thing that really seems to work is to have externally-imposed deadlines. The only way I could think of to do this was to sign up for classes, so I enrolled in a number of MOOCs. So far this has worked wonders - I went from basically spending most of my time playing around and wasting time, to several recent days where I studied for several hours straight.

The only thing I don't like about this setup is that there's a very limited number of really good MOOCs out there on the subjects I want to study. Also, most MOOCs are geared for a wider audience and are therefore dumbed-down to a certain degree.

So I had the following idea: A lot of us on LW seem to be studying a lot of the same material, whether it's the sequences, MIRI course list, CFAR booklist, or any of the various recommended reading lists. What if those who were studying the same thing would get together and set a schedule for themselves to finish the reading material, complete with deadlines? This might not be a normal "externally imposed" deadline, but at least it's a deadline with some social pressure to back it up. I can't be the only one on LW who could benefit from a deadline.

The details would need to be worked out, but here's a preliminary version of the way I envision it:

What do you think about such an idea?

10 comments

Comments sorted by top scores.

comment by [deleted] · 2014-03-05T22:20:07.406Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I agree - external deadlines help in many cases and it would be interesting to try this out.

In an ideal world I'd love to see a series of MOOC's on areas such as FAI, rationality, etc though I imagine working out an effective way to test some of the topics would be a challenge. Perhaps as a starting point someone could make a couple of short polls in the guise of a quiz and use voting as the answer?

Replies from: Slackson
comment by Slackson · 2014-03-07T00:47:36.456Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

What are the options for free MOOC platforms these days? Moodle's the only one that comes to mind, and it's not optimized for MOOCs.

Replies from: None
comment by [deleted] · 2014-03-07T12:48:51.322Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

There is OpenMooc and coming up in 3 months will be mooc.org

comment by TylerJay · 2014-03-06T05:37:13.598Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Deadlines are brutally effective for me. They got me through my first online programming course when none of the self-paced ones did and have continued to be effective for a year and a half of self-study. I'm taking a few MOOCs right now and a week ago, I was starting to fall behind. But then I had 3 deadlines last sunday. Between Tuesday of last week and sunday at 9pm, I easily put in 30 hours of work and got mostly caught up. It was the same in college. When there's an imminent deadline, I just don't think about doing anything else. It feels great actually.

comment by [deleted] · 2014-03-06T04:26:43.663Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Similar idea, less re-inventing the wheel, already paid for, already existing large infrastructures, more spreading of desired discussions: if any of us are in an existing class, incorporate LW topics. Whatever the class, there are ways to make it less wrong. Rather than continuing to talk to each other, we talk to not-each-other (with the added invaluable bonus that outsiders sometimes have criticisms overlooked / suppressed by insiders).

comment by Vaniver · 2014-03-06T02:25:26.863Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Perhaps people who have already studied a given text could put together a few quizzes / tests / finals for that text.

I think that trying to come up with test questions to determine if someone has understood posts in the Sequences (as well as other rationality material) is a worthwhile project, which has been suggested before.

I believe there have also been attempts to make a rationality MOOC; this comment links to some discussions (as well as being posted in response to another discussion of it), and I suspect Konkvistador is still a good person to contact.

Replies from: Punoxysm
comment by Punoxysm · 2014-03-06T06:08:00.701Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

CFAR runs courses. They could probably put on a MOOC without having to make a new curriculum

Replies from: Vaniver
comment by Vaniver · 2014-03-06T08:28:01.781Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

In-person classes and online classes are different, and should be taught differently. At some point I suggested that they just record a seminar, to possibly post parts of it online, but generating good material for a course and then administering it both represent expenditures of nontrivial amounts of capital and effort.

Replies from: Punoxysm
comment by Punoxysm · 2014-03-06T17:02:21.311Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Well, they could start with a set of mini-modules and upload them to youtube. A couple hours of total content. Put lecture notes and homeworks and a forum on a website. That was a pretty typical way to prototype the early MOOCs.

comment by Squark · 2014-03-05T21:06:58.188Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Sounds a good idea to me. As a side note, it would also be cool if we had recorded lectures on LW topics.