The Diabetes course from Copenhagen University is drawing to an end; only one week to go. I'll do a full postmortem when it's over (next week, basically), but in the meantime, some unordered remarks/comments:
Unlike most courses I take, I didn't register to this one to acquire useful skills or knowledge, but out of curiosity. I have, obviously, a specific interest in the subject matter (my son has Type 1 diabetes, as has my brother − sadly, the course is mostly silent about T1D and focuses almost exclusively on the much more widespread Type 2 diabetes), but I didn't expect to learn anything useful in daily life with a diabetic child. In that respect, I wasn't disappointed: I didn't.
I'm not certain, in truth, of what I expected. Some sort of generic high-level description of what diabetes is, its variants, its epidemiology, and a quick overview of the status of diabetes research, I guess. Instead, what I got is a series of seven very detailed, sometimes very technical, lectures about seven different aspects of diabetes research and/or treatment. While the first lecture, about the epidemiology of diabetes, was quite what I expected in terms of content (the production is consistently of a much higher quality than what I expected), the following ones have been both more challenging to follow / understand and much more interesting, in the sense of detailed, than what I expected.
Of course, since we have a different lecturer every week, the delivery is not always consistent (some people are basically better public speakers than others − week 4 in particular was very difficult to follow, with long lectures given in a monotonous voice; but maybe I was just especially tired that week). What is consistent though is, as I said above, the excellent production as shown in the smooth integration of graphics, videos, etc. in the lecture slides. Even the basic graphical elements are clear and crisp. Obviously Copenhagen University have invested some time and money to buy a professional-level production.
In the end, we have a smooth but surprisingly information-packed course. I am not certain what I'll remember of it in several months' time, though, since there is very little interactivity (just a few in-video quick questions and a quiz each week). Sadly, it is not possible to download lecture outlines for future reference, but we do get lecture transcripts.
As a last word, a quick reference to the “M” in MOOC. I guess I'm not the only one to have expected a more basic course (not that I'm complaining though); generally the level of the discussion forums is very low. The professors encourage directed discussion by asking several open questions every week; I am quite sure that were I brave enough to read every post in detail I'd find a fair number of intelligent, thoughtful insights. As it is, they're completely drowned in repetitive platitudes, so I find it better to just avoid the discussion forums altogether.
(It took less than three messages for a discussion about genetic screening for diabetes-associated risk alleles to reach the Godwin point…)
It's strange how some courses get intelligent, focused discussion forums and while some don't. So far the best I've seen were Caltech's Principles of Microeconomics and ANU's Astrophysics ones. I guess that's because both courses put a focus on collaborative problem-solving, while open-ended questions just reap a lot of clichés. In any case, that's a topic for another blog post, I guess.
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