I was saddened to discover that the course on Quantitative Methods held by my Faculty is no longer run, since I have been starting to realise that I'm sorely in need of some statistics training. After a bit of looking around, I decided that a MOOC was the ideal answer - it kills two birds with one stone. It gives me an opportunity to learn stats, and also gives me first-hand experience in a MOOC, so I can actually claim to have a valid opinion on their usefulness.
I settled on the Johns Hopkins course on Statistical Inference (https://www.coursera.org/course/statinference). It was hard to figure out which course would be right, since I don't know enough about what I don't know to really make a good decision. The description for this course indicated that it covered the things that I needed to know.
My initial experience is that it all seems a bit simple and lightweight compared to previous things I've learned. There just isn't the "hang on, can you explain that bit again" that you have in a face to face course. But things are sinking in, and I'm getting a lot of lightbulb moments as things click and I understand things I've been reading in papers for the last few years. I'm certain I don't know as much as I'd like to from this material, and very uncertain about whether I'd be able to apply it correctly after I finish this course.
In all, I think the MOOC structure isn't a bad way to get some learning done. But there are a lot of gotchas in there. The learning experience isn't great, since if you fall behind on a part there doesn't seem to really be a clear alternative route to understanding (unlike, say, a tutorial where you can ask dumb questions until you figure it out). The teaching is very didactic - it's a series of lectures with a very small quiz and homework attached. Also, the quiz and homework are far to similar. I feel I'd be better served by a lot more example questions, to really stretch my understanding of the material. The week-by-week structure is helpful in driving me to complete the material; without this procrastination would be much easier, so it's good to have that structure. I can understand the huge dropout rate - unless you really need to learn something, it is extremely easy to just give up when it gets too hard.
