😈 Unpopular opinion. Ep 4

Ep 4: Offline Courses Sucks!

Before you close the tab, let me bring some arguments to the table ⤵️

Attract best talents

During the covid I had several courses where students were from Armenia (both capital and multiple villages) and Russia (even from glubinka). Most of them were great students and they’d miss the class if it was offline.

And the class would miss them.

Out of box solutions for recordings

Recorded lessons were one of the great bonuses for students. Now they can re-watch the lesson multiple times instead of trying to remember everything. It really improved the performance.

Less operational costs

During the offline lessons, operational issues were the ones that bothered me the most. Broken projectors, cords, and lines.

Now, the only operational dependency is the internet.

But what about socialization?

One might argue that communication suffers during the online lesson. Sadly, I have to agree. But! We can and must adapt:

• Peer-graded assignments, Pair-programming, Team Related tasks

Coursera uses them to solve the problem of cooperation and experience sharing

• Start each lesson by experience sharing

Evil Martiance use every 10-20 minutes of their meeting time to share their life-related experience

• Online tours

e.g. visit the Louvre or watch some tv-shows via Netflix Party