Final Message
Dear fellow learners,
This is a good time to take stock of the experience we have
had together. Although this surely is “distance learning,” your responses to
the course have been enormous and vital. Some of you have pointed out errors
and offered alternative interpretations. But what stands out is that this
course has helped a great many people think about our common history and that
this has enriched their lives. Professors learn as they develop a course; good
ones learn more as they teach it and hear the ways their students respond.
More than 5,000 of you participated in the mid-course
survey. The responses to the open-ended questions take up hundreds of pages.
Here is a link to the quantitative responses so that, if you are interested,
you can see in a completely anonymous way how your fellow students responded to
those questions. In addition, many of you have posted comments. Some of you
have written emails directly to me. And I've encountered a number of you in
person as I travel from place to place. Everywhere, whatever the constructive
criticisms, the responses have been as gratifying as any teacher could ever
hope to experience. In my career as a teacher, no experience has been more
satisfying than this one. Thank you.
Since a number of you have asked about some of the course
statistics, I'm glad to share some with you, in addition to the quantitative
data in the survey. The number of students that enroll in a MOOC (in this case
around 47,000) is not a very interesting number. Many of those students never
even try out the course. About 26,000 people around the world sampled this
course at some point, perhaps just glancing at part of a video presentation. Of
these, my estimate is that somewhat more than half of those — maybe 13-15,000 —
decided to give the course a go and really work at it.
Of that number, it seems that about half of those were
determined to take all the quizzes, more or less on time. Almost 5,000 students
earned Statements of Accomplishment, the large majority of those Distinguished.
Since this is one of the longest courses on Coursera, running the length of an
entire 14 week semester (not counting spring break), earns no formal credit,
and is usually a significant addition to the very busy lives practically
everyone leads, that represents a striking level of commitment to studying and
reflecting on modern world history. In addition to that number, I estimate that
a roughly comparable number, perhaps another 5,000 or so, are auditing the
course thoroughly — taking some or none of the weekly quizzes — but nonetheless
working their way through the material. (The 92 presentations already have
945,840 unique views, which screens out students who streamed or downloaded the
presentation more than once.) Those working for the Statements wrapped up
around May 7; but about 5,000 students were still actively viewing
presentations during the last week, including presentations along the entire
length of the course. So my impression is that a majority of those who decided
to tackle this have pretty well stayed with it, despite the large time
commitment it entails.
The course will remain available until the end of this
month. Then we will put it in the garage for rest and refit. Thanks in part to
your comments we hope to make a variety of fixes, correcting inadvertent errors,
improving map animations, etc. As an example of the importance of your input,
we really noticed how valuable many of you found the transcripts, which were
largely machine-generated. So we will improve the quality of the transcripts,
hoping someday to find the funds to translate them into other languages so that
we, in effect, can offer subtitles to help students whose English skills are
more limited. We plan to offer the course again in Spring 2014, beginning in
January. Some of you have asked what else I'm teaching. For now anyway, my
other duties (I am a dean at my university and have some other obligations)
limit how much I can teach at all. But you've got me thinking…
My teammates at Virginia (Brandon and Stace) agree, though,
that your responses vindicate our choice to use the kind of format we did, as
if you were in my office (which is where we filmed), offering a mix of outlines
and many sorts of images — even the occasional film or audio clip. And as those
of you who took the quizzes know, it was not that easy to do well if you did
not pay attention — many of you working out your own ways of taking notes or
reviewing the material at your preferred pace (including the impatient fast
forwarders!).
As I mentioned in an earlier message, developments like this
course are themselves becoming an interesting facet of modern history. One
point I stress is that my university, and others, is now reaching a very large
number of non-traditional students, who are at least as eager to learn as many
of those we see in our classrooms. Institutions of higher education will need
to think hard about how we can serve — and learn from — more students like you.
Thank you and best wishes,
Philip Zelikow
Tue 14 May 2013 1:40 AM SGT (UTC +0800)
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