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Coursera: On The Topic of Boredom
Editor’s Note: Pamela Fox is Coursera’s Lead Student Team Engineer. A few weeks ago, my colleague Julia Stiglitz and I gave a talk at the GSummit conference about motivation and accomplishment in the online classroom. We looked at the problems that students face, and what we can do to make it better for them. One problem - that anyone who’s ever been a student or teacher in any setting probably knows - is that of boredom. When I was a student in grade school and got bored, I’d daydream or doodle and wait until something exciting happened or class ended. Now, if I’m a student in an online classroom and get bored, I simply “walk with my fingers” over to my next browser tab, and start browsing Reddit or Facebook or any one of those websites that I really should block forever. Eventually I realize I completely missed the lecture and have to re-watch it later, if that ever happens. The topic of boredom is present in classrooms, regardl…