<story><title>MIT and Harvard agree to transfer edX to ed-tech firm 2U</title><url>https://news.mit.edu/2021/mit-harvard-transfer-edx-2u-0629</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>turadg</author><text>This is a dilution of the meaning of &amp;quot;dark pattern&amp;quot;. darkpatterns.org which coined the term (and Wikipedia cites) says,
&amp;quot;When you use websites and apps, you don’t read every word on every page - you skim read and make assumptions. If a company wants to trick you into doing something, they can take advantage of this by making a page look like it is saying one thing when it is in fact saying another.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t see any of that in your observations. Moreover, what you attribute to some nefarious purpose is better explained by effective curriculum design. I haven&amp;#x27;t used edX lately but I worked at Coursera and I can tell you that the people who make that product have a passion to support learning in the world.&lt;p&gt;* Removing access to course materials: it&amp;#x27;s a course, not a content library. When you can access it anytime, you&amp;#x27;re less likely to do the work of learning. You also won&amp;#x27;t be part of a learning cohort, which is a valuable learning activity.&lt;p&gt;* Encouraging you to sign up for courses: this is a problem? Wouldn&amp;#x27;t someone who wants you to learn encourage you to sign up for courses? &amp;quot;Course began ($TODAY - 5)&amp;quot; that would be deceptive. Are you claiming that edX or Coursera does this?&lt;p&gt;* Breaking courses into chunks and quizzes. How the heck is this deceptive? This design decision is backed by learning science. Listening while doing dishes does not get you the best learning outcomes; it&amp;#x27;s a university-level course not a podcast.&lt;p&gt;* &amp;quot;Unsettling UI&amp;quot; &amp;quot;opportunity to pounce&amp;quot; I really don&amp;#x27;t know what to make of this one.</text></item><item><author>benrbray</author><text>I tried to use edX for the first time recently to take a &amp;quot;food science&amp;quot; course, but was disappointed to see that they&amp;#x27;ve resorted to the same dark patterns as Coursera and others, such as:&lt;p&gt;* Removing your access to course materials when the class is done, and disallowing access to past versions of the class.&lt;p&gt;* Pressuring you into joining as many courses as possible, due to fear of missing out.  When you visit the site, every course says &amp;quot;Course began ($TODAY-5)&amp;quot; to make you feel like &amp;quot;wow, I got here just in time!  I better sign up for everything!&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;* Breaking courses into useless 2-minute chunks and constant unhelpful quizzes.  I really just want to hear the lecturer speak for 20-30 minutes at a time uninterrupted, especially if I&amp;#x27;m listening while doing dishes etc.&lt;p&gt;* An unsettling UI that feels less like it&amp;#x27;s about presenting information in a compact and&amp;#x2F;or digestible way and more like it&amp;#x27;s tracking my every move and waiting for an opportunity to pounce.  Everything is a button or clickthrough menu that requires interaction.&lt;p&gt;Thankfully MIT OpenCourseWare still has plenty of lecture videos &amp;#x2F; course materials available.  But I&amp;#x27;m quite afraid for the future.</text></item><item><author>brutus1213</author><text>This seems like terrible news :( After the focus on monetization of platforms such as udemy and coursera, edx seemed to give me a sliver of hope that education will be open. Given the immense trust funds held by Harvard and MIT, I had hoped money would not be a factor and these institutions would be able to develop their platform in the open.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d like to add .. non-profit does not mean free to end users. There are many good non-profits and there are many terrible ones (highly paid execs, insane amount of money spent on marketing).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>light_hue_1</author><text>I think it&amp;#x27;s funny that you mention learning science. Actually, all of these patterns go against everything we know about teaching anyone anything.&lt;p&gt;* Removing access to course materials is horrible! I use old courses and books for reference all the time. When you can access the course any time, you refresh your learning. That&amp;#x27;s the key to long term retention.&lt;p&gt;* FOMO to force people to work at your pace rather than their pace is just as terrible. We know that students working at their pace, with encouragement, is what really works. Pushing people into courses when they aren&amp;#x27;t ready is terrible.&lt;p&gt;* Constant quizzes are a lazy version of what we know works, which is engagement like &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;icampus.mit.edu&amp;#x2F;projects&amp;#x2F;teal&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;icampus.mit.edu&amp;#x2F;projects&amp;#x2F;teal&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; Yes, quizzes are part of it, but a small part, the focus is on making courses interactive with meaningful work instead of boring 1-out-of-n choices. Making such courses is hard, so they take the easy and boring way out.&lt;p&gt;* If users find the UI unsettling, like it&amp;#x27;s too focused on tracking and too little on actual learning, that&amp;#x27;s a legitimate and important complaint. Education is not about getting arbitrarily high scores on some random online quizzes. You want people to actually learn something for the long run.&lt;p&gt;It really looks like edX and Coursera are taking the exam-driven horrors that are being inflicted on K-12 students all the time and translating them to the web. This is no way to teach. And you can see that with their extremely poor retention rates.</text></comment>
<story><title>MIT and Harvard agree to transfer edX to ed-tech firm 2U</title><url>https://news.mit.edu/2021/mit-harvard-transfer-edx-2u-0629</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>turadg</author><text>This is a dilution of the meaning of &amp;quot;dark pattern&amp;quot;. darkpatterns.org which coined the term (and Wikipedia cites) says,
&amp;quot;When you use websites and apps, you don’t read every word on every page - you skim read and make assumptions. If a company wants to trick you into doing something, they can take advantage of this by making a page look like it is saying one thing when it is in fact saying another.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t see any of that in your observations. Moreover, what you attribute to some nefarious purpose is better explained by effective curriculum design. I haven&amp;#x27;t used edX lately but I worked at Coursera and I can tell you that the people who make that product have a passion to support learning in the world.&lt;p&gt;* Removing access to course materials: it&amp;#x27;s a course, not a content library. When you can access it anytime, you&amp;#x27;re less likely to do the work of learning. You also won&amp;#x27;t be part of a learning cohort, which is a valuable learning activity.&lt;p&gt;* Encouraging you to sign up for courses: this is a problem? Wouldn&amp;#x27;t someone who wants you to learn encourage you to sign up for courses? &amp;quot;Course began ($TODAY - 5)&amp;quot; that would be deceptive. Are you claiming that edX or Coursera does this?&lt;p&gt;* Breaking courses into chunks and quizzes. How the heck is this deceptive? This design decision is backed by learning science. Listening while doing dishes does not get you the best learning outcomes; it&amp;#x27;s a university-level course not a podcast.&lt;p&gt;* &amp;quot;Unsettling UI&amp;quot; &amp;quot;opportunity to pounce&amp;quot; I really don&amp;#x27;t know what to make of this one.</text></item><item><author>benrbray</author><text>I tried to use edX for the first time recently to take a &amp;quot;food science&amp;quot; course, but was disappointed to see that they&amp;#x27;ve resorted to the same dark patterns as Coursera and others, such as:&lt;p&gt;* Removing your access to course materials when the class is done, and disallowing access to past versions of the class.&lt;p&gt;* Pressuring you into joining as many courses as possible, due to fear of missing out.  When you visit the site, every course says &amp;quot;Course began ($TODAY-5)&amp;quot; to make you feel like &amp;quot;wow, I got here just in time!  I better sign up for everything!&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;* Breaking courses into useless 2-minute chunks and constant unhelpful quizzes.  I really just want to hear the lecturer speak for 20-30 minutes at a time uninterrupted, especially if I&amp;#x27;m listening while doing dishes etc.&lt;p&gt;* An unsettling UI that feels less like it&amp;#x27;s about presenting information in a compact and&amp;#x2F;or digestible way and more like it&amp;#x27;s tracking my every move and waiting for an opportunity to pounce.  Everything is a button or clickthrough menu that requires interaction.&lt;p&gt;Thankfully MIT OpenCourseWare still has plenty of lecture videos &amp;#x2F; course materials available.  But I&amp;#x27;m quite afraid for the future.</text></item><item><author>brutus1213</author><text>This seems like terrible news :( After the focus on monetization of platforms such as udemy and coursera, edx seemed to give me a sliver of hope that education will be open. Given the immense trust funds held by Harvard and MIT, I had hoped money would not be a factor and these institutions would be able to develop their platform in the open.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d like to add .. non-profit does not mean free to end users. There are many good non-profits and there are many terrible ones (highly paid execs, insane amount of money spent on marketing).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cstejerean</author><text>EdX definitely shows “Starts $TODAY” on courses with self paced start any time schedules. I know it does this and it still gets me every time by creating this false sense of urgency that I must enroll today lest I miss the opportunity.</text></comment>