Many take the New Year—not to mention the new decade—as an opportunity to turn a new leaf, launch a new healthy habit, or generally better oneself. Online learning via massive open online courses (MOOCs) mark an excellent way to go about this process. Below, we’ve compiled four highly-rated personal development MOOCs spanning a broad range of categories. Each course starts soon and is free to audit.

To compile this short list, we turned to Class Central, which allows one to search existing and upcoming MOOCs.

Upcoming Personal Development MOOCs

Learning How to Learn for Youth

The original Learning How to Learn MOOC taught by professors Barbara Oakley and Terrence Sejnowski has long been one of the most popular offerings on Coursera. The version for younger learners is also considered by Class Central to be one of the top 100 MOOCs of all time.

Free to audit, the total course time requires four-five hours over a three-week period. The personal development MOOC begins on January 24. Learners can expect to better understand the process of learning and acquire tips and tricks to boost memory, improve studying, and avoid ‘rut thinking.’

As one reviewer writes, “I am a high school teacher and have completed the adult version of this course twice. I am recommending this new course to my students. It is certainly pitched at the right level for high school students and is equally interesting for adults. Well done.”

Access the MOOC here.

Critical Thinking at University: An Introduction

Maybe you’re a high school senior about to enroll in college. Maybe you’re a current university student. Maybe you’re simply looking to improve your critical thinking skills. This MOOC offered via FutureLearn is laser-focused on the actual process of critical thinking.

Taught by University of Leeds student affairs admins Jiani Liu and Michelle Schneider, this MOOC lasts only two weeks but includes eight total hours of instruction. Like the previously-mentioned course, this MOOC is among Class Central’s All-Time Top 100.

Access the MOOC here.

Introduction to Negotiation: A Strategic Playbook for Becoming a Principled and Persuasive Negotiator

Whether you’re about to meet with your boss to discuss a raise or make a big purchase, like a car or a house, you’re going to want to know the basics of negotiation before you walk in the room. This personal development MOOC, taught by Yale School of Management Professor Barry Nalebuff and offered via Coursera, promises to introduce you to that knowledge and skill set.

It begins on January 27 and lasts nine weeks. Over that time, learners will get introduced to the art of negotiation and investigate numerous case studies. The final three courses are led by other negotiation experts, each of whom brings a unique experience and outlook to the course.

Access the MOOC here.

Inspiring Leadership Through Emotional Intelligence

You don’t need to be in a leadership role to benefit from this course. You also don’t need to be lacking in emotional intelligence. Professor and psychology expert Richard Boyatzis has published, coached, and taught widely. He currently serves as the Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Psychology at Case Western Reserve University.

This MOOC is both unique and wide-ranging. Besides going over the link between positive leadership and emotional intelligence, Professor Boyatzis also covers factors such as chronic stress, the virtues of positive hope and vision, and bringing about sustained change. The course involves three-four hours of instruction each week over an eight week period. It begins on January 27th.

Access the MOOC here.

Self improvement and personal development—like MOOCs—come in many forms. The above mark some of the highest-rated personal development MOOCs that are beginning soon. But there are also many more available, and many that will be starting in just a few weeks. Find out about more on Class Central.

Featured Image: Markus Spiske, Unsplash.

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The Open University, currently the U.K.’s largest institution of higher education, is making a play to capture a bigger slice of the online distance learning pie. As reported by the Financial Times, the public university has hired IBIS Capital with the goal of raising £40 million (with an additional £10 million committed by OU) to boost its MOOC platform, FutureLearn.

In doing so, OU hopes to increase its online course offerings and create further distance degree paths. FutureLearn currently has 929 MOOCs available, according to Class Central.

Over 8 million learners have registered on the platform since it launched in 2013. Of those, roughly 60,000 learners currently are paying members for FutureLearn courses. Those learners bring in revenue of £8.2m. With the sought after capital injection, OU hopes to boost those figures to 1 million paying learners, which would translate into annual revenue of £100m, by 2025.

Following the OU Mission to Expand Access to Education

OU was founded in 1969 by the U.K. Labour Party. Pegged as an affordable, accessible avenue to higher education, the institution is now the country’s largest and educates nearly one-third (31%) of the U.K.’s university-going individuals under 25.

With a significantly smaller user base and, if successful, a much lower capitalization compared to competitors, OU and FutureLearn have an ambitious hill to climb to reach their 2025 goals. Recent rumblings in the Silicon Valley-dominated MOOC space, however, provide at least a mild forecast for the endeavor.

At the end of last week, TechCrunch reported that Udacity, which along with Coursera currently make up the two MOOC-adjacent unicorns, has let go 5% of their staff since August.

“Back in August, five percent of our global employees were laid off based on carefully considered, strategic business decisions,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch. “We are supporting our former and current employees through the transition. Our business continues to grow, with offices in India, China, Germany, Brazil, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates, in addition to Silicon Valley. We continue to hire for key roles.”

In February of this year, CEO Vishal Makhijani reported his company brought in $70 million in 2017 and dropped hints about a possible IPO. Still, the company has not received any funding since 2015 and there is conjecture that their Nanodegree program—which at this point looks more like a short vocational program than the MOOCs first produced by the company—are not as successful as originally hoped.

Over the weekend, CreateLive, an online learning platform closer to Udemy’s model, also laid off an unspecified amount of employees.

FutureLearn Follows a Model Closer to edX or Coursera

With a range of free and paid courses and partnerships with over 150 institutions of higher ed around the world, FutureLearn has aligned their model closer to Coursera and edX. While we haven’t heard much from the former lately besides their continuing expansion of offerings, edX reported strong growth and ambitious goals at their annual conference last spring.

Via their own platform along with Open edX, the non-profit organization has taught roughly 35 million learners since it launched in 2012. That makes them the most popular MOOC provider worldwide, easily edging out Coursera’s 30 million learners. Speaking at Université de Montréal in May, CEO Anant Agarwal put forward the goal of signing up 100 million users by 2022.

Non-profit and freemium business models, so far, have prevailed in the MOOC space in terms of user numbers. But they likely remain behind in terms of net profitability. The non-profit platform brought in under $13 million in 2017. It may well be that private providers like Coursera and Udacity still don’t net profits, but that is unknown.

It will no doubt be interesting to see where FutureLearn goes should they secure capital funding.

Featured Image: Wikimedia Commons.

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eLearning and online education at the university level has proven to be a solution to countless barriers separating willing students from much-needed knowledge. But while access grows, and education technology continues to develop at a rapid pace, there’s one issue that has yet to be solved: professors.

Instructors may be fond of reminding their students that the right attitude leads to success. But their attitudes towards eLearning has, by and large, remained downright icy.

This week, a study published by Inside Higher Ed and Gallup found that only 33% of professors believe that for-credit online courses could match an in-person learning environment. For every professor willing to bring their course online, there’s another who remains ambivalent and another who opposes doing so.

The good news, however, is that the tides are changing. Just one year ago, the number of teachers who disagreed that an online setting could ever match in-person tutelage sat at 55%. This year that number dropped to 35%, while the numbers of those who both agreed and remained neutral rose.

One thing that seems to have a big impact is whether or not a teacher has ever taught an online course. Between 2013 and 2017, the number of teachers who brought their class online rose from 30% to 42%. Tellingly, 7 in 10 of teachers who have taught online say that their remote class helped them develop new teaching strategies and skills.

Other metrics are more promising, such as teachers who support the inclusion of new technology in the classroom (62%), and the amount of instructors who believe that textbooks are too expensive and that more emphasis should be placed on open resources (90%).

But in general, professor ambivalence to eLearning remains strong

One big reason for this is that preparing an online course takes a lot of work. A recent study by an Australian team found that it takes teachers longer to prepare online classes compared to in-person lectures.

And yet, according to the authors, administrators believe online courses should take less work.

“In our experience,” writes Professor John Kenny of the University of Tasmania, “ the prevailing pressure from administrators is that online students take less staff time to teach, [but] staff indicate that the materials take longer to prepare.”

It is well-known that academic work is complex and difficult to quantify [but] with the lack of clear time-based standards to work with, we have noticed a managerial tendency to pile more duties, particularly compliance duties, on to the desks of academics without assessing the associated workload impact,” Kenny said.

The two studies cited above suggest that there may be some friction between teachers and administrators in general. Inside Higher Ed and Gallup found that two-thirds of professors believe that both administrators and vendors “exaggerate the potential financial benefits,” of education technology and “play down the risks to quality.”

What’s more, taking a course online has serious implications over ownership. As you might guess, it’s not favorable for teachers.

In 2014, Jeff Hoyt, assistant vice dean at Middle Tennessee State University, surveyed 110 higher education institutions about their policy regarding ownership of online courses. He found that 30% of those schools had no policy at all. Only 1 in 10 institutions let their professors maintain sole ownership over their online courses. 41% allowed for joint ownership and about a third of universities claimed outright possession.

Going above and beyond

This might explain why academics who eagerly offer their course in MOOC form are few and far between. Al Filreis, an English professor at the University of Pennsylvania, goes above and beyond to teach his Modern and Contemporary American Poetry MOOC. He re-films his lectures every semester and makes sure that every comment is answered within a few hours.

Professor Charles Severance from the University of Michigan was one of the first at his school to give MOOCs a try. Amazingly, he offers office hours to his remote students when he travels to new cities.

These are the efforts of academic rock stars, and it’s unreasonable to expect the average professor to voluntarily take on more work that won’t have much of a benefit for them, they may not own their online courses, and it will take more time away from their research.

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In mid-September, the nanodegree pioneer Udacity announced it would be partnering with Lyft to offer a new Self-Driving Car (SDC) introduction course. The 4-month course costs $800, but Lyft is offering 400 scholarships to help attract the best students to the program regardless of their financial backgrounds.

The course requires some programming experience, but when students complete it, they will be guaranteed admission into the Advanced Self-Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree program and well-equipped to enter the workforce.

Udacity has formed dozens of partnerships—deals that often include hiring agreements—with tech giants and other major corporations intended to bring them the top talent and train them specifically for certain jobs.

“At Lyft, our mission is to improve lives through the world’s best transportation but we can’t do that unless the best and brightest from all perspectives are given the opportunity to contribute,” said Raj Kapoor, chief strategy officer at Lyft. “We have long admired Udacity’s commitment to the democratization of education and are thrilled to offer scholarships for this new self-driving program to communities that are underrepresented in technology.”

“Democratization”

Udacity emerged from founder Sebastian Thrun’s Stanford AI course that enrolled 160,000 students. But after launching, they realized that, often, less than 10% of enrollees completed their free MOOCs. In 2013, Thrun admitted to Fast Company, “We have a lousy product.”

But then they pivoted into a more aggressive for-profit model and began to charge money for industry-specific, vocational programs. Dubbed ‘nanodegrees,’ these programs typically feature corporate partnerships and are designed specifically to connect star students with employers in tech.

This system marked a new form of teaching, a kind of venture education, which threw (and continues to throw) a mass of students against the proverbial wall and collects the ones who stick. Corporate partners, in turn, have the chance to select among the elite group of top performers, a workforce they can pay less than individuals with industry experience.

Udacity currently has over 53,000 users enrolled in programs of various topics and structures. They typically cost $200/month. The company has declined to discuss the details of their corporate partnerships, but it seems probable that they extend beyond ‘neighbors helping neighbors.’

Tech industry leaders like Raj Kapoor would love to brand Lyft’s new partner as a democratizing force, but that only describes part of the story. Udacity is currently valued at over $1 billion.

New Ways of Profiting from Online Education

Udacity marks just one-way disrupters are profiting from online education using business models previously absent from the field.

The company with the most registered users, Coursera, operates on a kind of graduated and diversified freemium model. You can try before you buy with Coursera, but to progress in their classes, students can pay a flat fee, get a bundled deal, or sign up for a subscription package. With enough credits, students can obtain accredited degrees. Though it has millions more users than Udacity, Coursera was just valued at $800 million in June.

Alison, an e-learning provider from Galway, Ireland, offers all of its content completely free for students and generates revenue—some of which it shares with course providers depending on their contract—by selling ad space. Many other for-profit MOOC educators use some combination of these strategies.

For-Profit Education

Make no mistake, these companies are changing the world by providing more widespread access to education with lower barriers of entry. They’re also generating huge profits in the process.

What’s more, as scholar Amy Sepinwell writes in Corporations and Citizenship (2014), there’s a fine line between educating and exploiting. For-profit universities—typically traditional-style institutions like the University of Phoenix—have “targeted homeless shelters and halfway houses for potential students, seeking to enroll individuals who are recovering drug addicts or alcoholics, or convicted felons.”

“At the same time,” Sepinwell continues, “through the use of MOOCs, [for-profits] may be able to offer their students the star power and quality instruction that elite institutions provide, without shortchanging their students by denying them the spontaneous and sometimes unique experiences emerging in the live classroom.”

The moral: While MOOCs began as an initiative that would bring education to those who struggled to access it, the practice was soon swallowed up by-, or transformed into for-profit education. This is not an innovation of democracy, it’s capitalism.

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As new digital methods of hosting content arise, we change the way we consume it. Whether it’s a MOOC (massive online open course) or a series on Netflix, with greater availability comes the increased ability to consume more, faster. Most people know this as binging. Most people—especially if they only caught on to Game of Thrones during season 4—have spent hours of their free time watching episode after episode.

We generally consider binging a bad thing, but a new study conducted by Wharton professors Eric Bradlow, J. Wesley Hutchinson, and doctoral candidate Tong Lu, suggests that binging content helps us learn better.

Their study examined students taking a class on Coursera, one of the most widely used online education platforms. They received and analyzed data regarding how quickly students in multiple different classes consumed each learning module and compared it to their performance in the class.

Temporal vs. Content Binging

To begin, the researchers identified two different types of binging. The first is much like what someone might do with a Netflix series: they watch episode after episode or proceed through module after module in quick succession. They called this “temporal” binging. The other kind involves focusing on one subject intently. For example, a student might make it all the way through their marketing course before they begin history. They referred to this as “content” binging.

Binging Vs. Non-Binging in E-Learning

After the researchers analyzed student learning patterns, they compared them to their grades. To their surprise, the students who binged did better than those who did not. Bradlow, furthermore, had research he conducted on consumer binging habits with Netflix and Hulu three years earlier. During that study, he found that binge consumers were more likely to become lifelong consumers. He was now able to draw a few conclusions:

“[I]n our case on Coursera,” Bradlow told the Knowledge@Wharton podcast, “people who binge consume marketing and operations are more likely to complete their finance course. They’re more likely to complete their accounting course. Just like we found in our work three years ago, it appears that binge consumption leads to higher customer lifetime value. That was the key takeaway. We’ve just reinforced that and basically replicated that in an online educational content setting.”

There are still a few questions left to be answered. For one, it’s difficult to determine which type of binging leads to better results. Many students participated in both temporal and content forms of binging. Others binged for a certain period before reverting to non-binging tactics. The study, furthermore, asked if binging helped the learning process, not why. That remains quite mysterious.

Sequential vs. Simultaneous Release

What remains clear is that when designing a content-hosting platform—whether it’s an e-learning initiative or a video streaming service—it’s imperative to allow for the practice of binging. Before the Internet era, content was delivered in non-binge-able formats. TV series would release one episode per week. Serialized books were published in sections. This is what’s known as sequential release: small bytes of content that come out periodically.

Online platforms, however, have adopted a new strategy: simultaneous release. This makes all content available immediately. It doesn’t affect people who prefer not to binge, but it allows bingers to consume with abandon.

As Barlow explains, “There’s a known phenomenon in the behavioral literature called goal gradient. People accelerate their consumption of something as they get near the end. As you get near the goal, your gradient increases. In other words, you work harder as you can see the finish line.”

Binge Learning vs. Distributed Practice

Bradlow, Hutchinson, and Lu’s results are surprising because most research indicates that non-intensive and varied studying practices improve knowledge retention. Fast, intensive learning does not stick as well. Studies by countless academics have proven this point.

But here’s the clincher: most of these studies have involved students cramming in a traditional university class, and not people enrolled in MOOCs. University crammers have likely skipped most classes and hope to learn everything in the course of a few late nights. Online students, however, spend roughly the same amount of time as students who spread their studies out. It is likely that much of the previous research does not apply to MOOCs, especially those in which students must go through module by module. In these scenarios, cramming is impossible.

As Bradlow contends, his team’s findings have implications not only for online learning but for businesses and any other application of content-hosting platforms. Their research is far from over and there is little doubt they will refine their results in the future.

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Imagine completing an entire degree online and doing so at no cost? In the age of online learning, this is now possible, but as MOOC offerings continue to proliferate, crafting a degree and selecting courses can be a challenge. In eLearningInside News’s “Top MOOCs” series, we offer tips on how to craft the very highest quality degrees across subject areas and levels. Our first installment, Top MOOCs: BA in English, offers suggestions on how to craft the very best bachelor’s degree in English using available MOOCs from seveval of the world’s most prestigious universities.

Establish a Program of Study

Every bachelor’s degree in English has somewhat different guidelines but by and large, departments of English require candidates to acquire what is most often described as “coverage.” In other words, in order to complete a bachelor’s degree in English, candidates must acquire a demonstrated knowledge of English-language literature across different historical periods and national literary traditions. This means that anyone who thinks they can simply take courses on contemporary American literature or only read Shakespearean plays is out of luck. While such specializations are typically required as one’s studies progress (e.g., at the doctoral level), the bachelor’s degree aims to offer a broad-based knowledge of the field.

At Yale University, which is home to one of the top-ranked English departments in the United States, undergraduates must typically complete 12 courses and a “senior requirement.” Core requirements include 3 foundational courses; at least one advanced course in medieval, renaissance, 18th or 19th century, and 20th to 21st century literature; and up to 2 creative writing courses. Additional guidelines advise that students take more senior- than junior-level courses. Finally, for the senior requirement, either 2 senior seminars or 1 senior seminar and a thesis is required. Using the Yale guidelines as a template, our proposed Top MOOC BA in English includes the following range of courses:

• English Poetry I (foundation level)
• English Poetry II (foundation level)
• American Literature (foundation level)
• British Literature (any level)
• World Anglophone Literature (any level)
• Medieval (advanced)
• Renaissance (advanced)
• Single Author Course 1 (e.g., Chaucer or Shakespeare)
• Literary Criticism (advanced)
• Creative Writing (any level)
• 18th Century/19th Century (advanced)
• 20th/21st Century (advanced)
• Senior Seminar 1 (any 4000-level course)
• Senior Seminar 2 (any 4000-level course)

Explore Recommended Courses

The best thing about completing a MOOC-based degree is that you can choose where and with whom you will study. eLearningInside News‘s staff writers and researchers consulted with English professors nationwide to develop the following list of recommended MOOCs. Notably, while offerings in English pale in comparison to the vast offerings now available in the applied sciences, it is still possible to build a robust program with coverage across all of English literature’s major fields of concentration. Our list includes courses taught by top literary scholars and book historians from Harvard, Yale, and Berkeley, as well as several highly recognized institutions outside the United States.

• English Fiction (foundation level): Start with English Literature & Composition Part 1: Stories (edX Berkeley).
• English Poetry  (foundation level): Also complete English Literature & Composition Part 2: Poetry (edX Berkeley).
• American Literature (foundation level): Just a two top recommendations include Professor Cary Nelson’s Modern American Poetry class (Coursera) and a co-taught Dartmouth College course, The American Renaissance (edX).
• British Literature (any level): We recommend Yale Professor John Rogers’ course on Milton (Open Yale).
• World Literature (any level): Look no further than Masterpieces of World Literature with David Damrosch and Martin Puchner of Harvard University (edX).
• Medieval (advanced): Before the printing press, every book was also a unique work of art. In The Book: Making and Meaning in Medieval Manuscripts (edX Harvard), you’ll learn how to read medieval works as they were intended to be read. Professor John Cain’s Medieval Women Writers (MIT Open Courseware) is another recommended course in this category.
• Renaissance (advanced): Professor Stephen Greenblatt is among the most established literary critics in the world and one of the world’s leading experts on Renaissance literature. If you want to study the period with a top expert, enroll in Shylock’s Bond (edX Harvard). While focused on a single character from a single Shakespearean play, like his books, Greenblatt’s courses always offer a deep dive into literary and intellectual history.
• Single Author Course 1 (e.g., Chaucer or Shakespeare): We recommend Professor Jonathan Bates’s Shakespeare and his World (FutureLearn).
• Literary Criticism (advanced): Yale University’s English department has long been a leader in literary theory. On this basis, we recommend Professor Paul H. Fry’s Introduction to Theory of Literature through Open Yale.
• Creative Writing (any level): For creative writing, we recommended taking advantage of the University of East Anglia’s offering An Introduction to Screenwriting (FutureLearn) or the University of British Columbia’s How to Write a Novel (edX). Both the University of East Anglia in England and the University of British Columbia in Canada are known for their established creative writing programs, so be certain to explore their other available creative writing MOOCs to find one that meets your specific needs.
• 18th Century/19th Century (advanced): To fill this category, try Professor Noel Jackson’s Eighteenth Century Literature (MIT Open Courseware).
• 20th/21st Century (advanced):  We recommend Professor Langdon Hammer’s Modern Poetry course, which is offered through Open Yale.
• Senior Seminar 1 (any 4000-level course): Harvard Professor and book historian Leah Price offers a fascinating glimpse into the world of 19th-century reading practices in Book Sleuthing (edX Harvard). This book will deepen your knowledge of 19th-century literature while helping you hone your research skills.
• Senior Seminar 2 (any 4000-level course): Professor Mary Fuller’s advanced special topics course on Milton’s “Paradise Lost” (MIT Open Courseware) is the ideal way to cap off your MOOC-based bachelor’s degree in English.

Start Your Program and Persevere

Not everyone who starts a MOOC or a MOOC-based degree finishes. Sticking to your program of study will require discipline and stamina but the rewards are well worth it. For inspiration, read our interview with David Venturi who crafted his own master’s degree in data science and then landed a job with an established MOOC developer.

Are you currently completing a MOOC-based BA in English? Are you trying out our recommended program of study? Send us your recommendations for courses or just drop us a line to share your experience. We welcome your reviews and reflections.

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