My Online Course Experience on edX

Recently I have enrolled an online training on EdX.com and completed all the lessons under “Understanding User Needs” course which is prepared by Michigan University. Earlier I have taken online courses from coursera, which is another popular platform which provides online courses from the world’s best universities. Now let me share my experience on edX shortly:

Online, access from where you are - It is online so you can access whenever and wherever you are. In the weekend, I took courses when I was in summer house where we do not have wi-fi but I can reach the course content by sharing internet of my mobile phone. The internet quota used is reasonable so it is really no problem. Apart from this, everyday I go to work by bus, and it takes my more than 2 hours in total. The bus has wi-fi and I can easily resume the lessons while traveling. It has mobile applications as well but I do prefer to attend trainings from my laptop which has bigger screen so I can concentrate on the videos and presentations better.

You Need to Document That You've

Done Your Homework

Back to Homeworks – After completing each lesson, you are given an assignment. In other words, in order to complete each lesson, you need to your homework. The homeworks in the training I completed can take up to 8 hours. You need to provide the homework in the format which is described and then you submit it. Do not think about not doing your homework or submitting unsatisfactory works because they are all assessed by your peers who are also resuming this course and low quality on these assignments will bring low notes and then you may not pass the course.
One of the assessments was about writing a report on the main take-aways of interviews. Here you can find my report: 
http://volkanyorulmaz.blogspot.com/2018/07/e-book-experience-for-google-play-books.html

Peer Reviews May Suck - For me, the biggest disadvantage of taking an online course from EdX is receiving really slow peer reviews to my assignments. An assignment is reviewed by two peers and then you receive your grade for your “homework”. In my case, within one week, I have only received 2 finalized peer reviews. What was more annoying was in one lesson, a peer evaluated my assignment in a subjective way and he/she graded many of my inputs as “poor” whereas the other peer graded as “very good”. I believe some users of EdX generally do this because I have seen similar comments in the discussion box. Related with this issue, I have sent a notification to EdX team about the user’s possible fake and subjective evaluations and grading but as of the date of this content, I could not receive a reply.

Good Content by Good Lecturer – I have not been to Michigan University before but of course I have heard about its reputation.  While attending the lessons, I clearly understand the quality of the content and its smooth presentation by the lecturer. The platform enables us to download materials as well which we can refer while preparing for the assessments or later on for any need of re-invent the concepts we have covered.

In conclusion, my advice for all potential edX learners or any other popular platform which provides online courses is that if it crosses your interest or mind that taking a course is worth doing, then go for it and enrol the course.  Don’t let your hesitations get in the way of bettering yourself because you deserve to grow both personally and professionally.

Another Success Story Comes...

e-Book Experience for Google Play Books Users

Recently I have attained a training on EdX. In of the lessons of the training, I have done interviews with two of my colleagues who purchase books from Google Play Books about the use of e-readers. In this practice, I have noticed two main take-aways as finding, these are:

-        People tend to buy printed versions of some kind of books

-        Google ecosystem and technological features of the e-readers simplifies the lives of the readers

Related with my edX experience, I have created another blog content. Here it is:

http://volkanyorulmaz.blogspot.com/2018/07/my-online-course-experience-on-edx.html

The first and foremost important input that I received during the interview was that one of the great pleasures of reading is the physical turning of the page. It slows you down and makes you think. Starting with the fact that e-readers do not provide this satisfaction issue to its customers makes us know that it is, despite the likelihood of original book effects, still an electronic device. Indeed, I have noticed that people are really thinking about how the books are – not just what’s in them, but what they’re like as objects. This object issue creates a differentiation point between the original book and e-book. For instance, you just can’t do a selfie with an e-reader. When you can’t do this selfie, then you what will you post with hashtag bookstagram to your Instagram account while you are drinking coffee. In addition to this “object” issue, people have books in their house as pieces of art. It is somehow Apart from this, users of Google Play Books point out that children’s books, which represent an area of significant growth, just don’t work well on e-readers. People prefer to give, or read, children’s books like Harry Potter titles in print, and healthy cooking titles and biographies sell very well in print compared to ebook format. As you can see, there are some types of books which ebooks still cannot fully compete. In such types, people need to touch, see and observe the content while having the book in their hands.

In Play Books, readers can read books offline, use a dictionary to look up unfamiliar words, and have their notes and place in the book saved across multiple devices through their Google account. The readers who previously bought from Google Play Books informed me that buying a book from the Play Store makes that book available to you across all your devices where you have logged in using your Google account. What's even neater is that Play Books remembers the page you were on in a book when you stopped reading, and lets you read from that page even if you're doing so on a different device. Such features are supported with much better and technological features which makes the lives of people much easier. This is appreciated by Google Play Books customers. Staying within the Google ecosystem makes it easy to share purchases with family members. This feature makes our life easier and more economic. Besides, there’s a new Smart Resume feature in Google Play Books, which brings an integration with Google Assistant’s Routines feature, by this feature better speed controls will be provided to the user. People are optimistic about the future due to the rise of the technology. They even hope that one day, when I say, “Ok Google, take me to work,” I’ll get the traffic and weather reports, and then my audiobook will automatically start playing. In addition to this features which are live today or will come soon (hopefully), Google Play provides some advantages in terms of pricing. For instance, in the World Book Day, Google Play helped the customers find cheaper books. Moreover, readers of Google Play Books noticed that books by Turkish authors are priced reasonably or cheap than the market price.

In conclusion, some people prefer some types of books as objects or like they call “state of art” and want to live with them. It will not be easy for e-books to challenge such type of books. On the other hand, technological features make the readers life easy and as this trend goes on, people will buy, read or listen to books. Price advantage of e-books will differentiate the sales of them compared to “object” books.

Affinity Wall Practice in order to prepare this summary