Generation Z and Online Courses
Today I finished watching the last video from one free course on Udacity. Can you guess what I did next? Approximately 20 minutes I was searching for the next lesson and next video in this course. And that’s all just because I didn’t get what I expected.
You can definitely ask me what I was expecting from a good, but free course? Well, I just hoped I will get some “Yeee, you did it!” or smth like that from the… screen. I really coudn’t believe it is completed for the next half an hour.
It’s pretty easy to stay motivated if you know that after completing the course you can share a link on Facebook with your friends and they will see what a cool, up to date, continuously learning person you are (some courses from Coursera allow it or even courses with Nanodegree on Udacity). Ok then, I know, it stays on the website of Udacity (yep, I searched for that information as well) that they don’t give any certificate and any links confirming that.
“Think of free courses as a textbook. Anyone is welcomed to read the textbook but the publisher would not confirm whether or not you read the book.”
And I even can think about free courses as a textbook. Right. For one minute definitely. But what I get in the end? No certificate, no boasting of my new achievement among friends (they can live without it, unlike me). What else is important for me then?
Haven’t people on the screen told me that that was the last video? They have. Should I feel satisfied because of completing the course? Perhaps. But Udacity still offers me proceeding with this course and I can’t feel that satisfaction. To be honest I expected that feeling. Like at least something I can get finished and done in my life. I expected it more than appearing a new string with this course in my CV. Can’t it be a reason to take an online course?
I was so sad that I didn’t get my small dream about a big star and a firework from the screen in the end that I was entitled to take another course and to learn how to program it (now you can laugh).
One can say — oh, this generation Z is so demanding. Again. But if you take a book — you expect to see a book. And if you take an e-learning course — you expect a bit more than a book. At least an e-learning course, right? If you can gamify it, why not do it? If you could make some online questionnaires like every online course now does (including the one I took), why not to make one smaaaall animation or, conversely, big letters on the whole screen (like motivational quotes: the bigger — the better) telling smth nice to a person who just spent a lot of time learning (and who has perhaps a lot of inner struggles right now whether he or she can use this information in a real world).
I sound like a generation Z, I know. But it wasn’t my first online-course. And what I noticed is how hard it is to stay motivated during the whole course. And it’s not only me who faced that problem.
Only 7% of people in the world and 10% of people in Ukraine complete online courses they are enrolled into (according to the director of Ukrainian free online-platform Prometheus).
A lot of disputes arose from that topic, from the necessity to pay for the education to stay motivated and to extreme points that suggest not using e-learning at all.
Is it only gamification what I and other people need? I did some too gamified courses like JavaRush as well (if you haven’t heard about it, it’s a Russian course teaching… Java, you guessed it!). I haven’t completed it. There were just other problems unrelated to motivation. So, perhaps, the problem is not only in e-learning that looks like just ordinary learning with one not very interested in your results teacher.
But what then?
What I noticed and what I lacked was just human attitude. I’d like to show you some example of it my friend came across in Sweden. And I would really appreciate seeing more human world like that around me.
“Are you going to take a theoretical part of the driver’s text? Next door! And, you, good luck!”
So now, all of you guys, who didn’t get your star and firework after completing some very important, but boooring or just long course, here you are! You did it! And you are awesome!
