Hacker News Reader

What makes these courses look bad is the fact that many people will just sign up just take a peek at the content, rather than genuinely want to see it all the way through.

I guess this adds to the attrition rate.

View on HN

I'm glad to see that they are considering longer periods than a semester: I started the course and enjoyed the ability to view the lectures at a high speed and the exercises were to the point (Even if rather easy but it was expected for an introduction course). But I couldn't finish it due to real life university load.

I would like to see more flexible deadlines such as 2/3 weeks since the last assignment for ex. but I understand it wouldn't be manageable when taking midterms and finals into account or provide significantly more work having to make a few of those or delay if they were at constant dates...

why does that make the course look bad?

It makes it look bad to people who judge it based on the attrition rate.

All manner of wonderful things look bad to such people.

There's a bunch of reasons people might drop out of a university course. Some of these reflect badly on the university/means of course delivery. For example, if they're dropping the course because it's poorly taught, or they can't understand the lecturer.

There's no indication this was a problem with the MITx course though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com