Free Online Genealogy Course with FutureLearn (Week 6)

[groom]

Perhaps someone who hasn't yet completed the survey could do that? Once you've done it, it won't let you add to it.

[Wiggy]

Think you could be correct, Jan!

  It sure is better having someone to chat to, get hints from and ask for advice.

Bad luck, already done the survey!

[Deirdre784]

Perhaps someone who hasn't yet completed the survey could do that? Once you've done it, it won't let you add to it.

I could do that 

[3sillydogs]

What groom is saying is true, we all started out looking forward to it, but it didn't live up to our expectations.  Perhaps we expected too much as none of us (well I know I don't) think of ourselves as expert genealogists no matter how long we have been researching our trees, and were looking forward to learning something new.

What I have learned I either found out the hard way from making mistakes early on and from the years spent here on Rootschat.

[3sillydogs]

Completed week 1 of the Hans Christian Anderson course I signed up for and have had an email with feed back from one of the course hosts.  It is clear in the email that comments that were made have been read by them and some are mentioned and discussed.

Will see how it progresses, definitely more involvement from their side, but then there aren't as many comments to deal with, to be fair.

[groom]

Perhaps they underestimated just how popular the course was going to be, but when they realised how many people had enrolled they should have brought more people onto the moderating team. On other courses that I've done, there have been several postgraduates from the University who have acted as moderators and contributed to the discussion.

Luckily, from what I saw, everyone on this course was friendly and polite, but that doesn't always happen. On another course, discussions did get quite heated between two groups and the moderators had to step in. They also stepped in to correct wrong information and to answer questions. Obviously in this course, where, as far as could see, the only people involved were Tahita and Graham, there were too many comments for them to cope with. The only time I noticed anything from them was to direct people to courses run by the university.

[3sillydogs]

 I think you're right and they were overwhelmed by the response to the course.  There were often so many replies it was difficult to follow any discussion at all. Perhaps the next time they offer it they will be better prepared.

But as you say they could perhaps have called in undergrads to help out.

[maddys52]

Completed week 1 of the Hans Christian Anderson course I signed up for and have had an email with feed back from one of the course hosts.  It is clear in the email that comments that were made have been read by them and some are mentioned and discussed.

Will see how it progresses, definitely more involvement from their side, but then there aren't as many comments to deal with, to be fair.

I'm much more impressed with the Hans Christian Anderson course, and the Shakespeare one too. Not only more involvement from the course hosts and the end of week feedback, but also the thinking that had to go into joining in some of the discussion topics, rather than just giving anecdotes about our previous genealogical research. Perhaps getting more out of it because I knew less about it to start with? And as you say, fewer to comments on the discussion are probably easier for the moderators to deal with - around 300 as compared to 1000 or so in the genealogy course.

[dwfeathers]

I agree with all the comments re FutureLearn genealogy. The feedback from staff was disappointing and everyone was anecdotal. I gave up making comments after the first couple of weeks. Perhaps the organisers have learnt from their own course, but more likely happy with the sycophants! I've taken other FutureLearn courses so will look to see if any others on family history.