Reflections on Online Learning

I mentioned previously that I have recently moved to Silicon Valley in California as my husband is a software engineer and is working in the hub of the tech world. While I wait out the wait for a green card, I thought I would beef up my brain and take some courses online. This past semester I have taken my first two graduate level online courses and I’ve learned some things along the way. Maybe I’m alone in these, or maybe my experiences are reflective of others’ - but to illustrate, I have compiled a list of pros and cons for taking online courses:

Pro: You can work at your own speed.

Con: All of a sudden it’s the deadline for a month’s worth of work and “working at your own speed” means working at warp speed. 

Pro: You can live anywhere.

Con: Living anywhere means sometimes you have to be awake at ungodly hours to attend a live review session.

Pro: You can speed up or slow down the lecture videos (You can! I discovered  this featured this semester…you just press the little gear/flower-like thing in the bottom right corner and select your playback speed!)

Con: It is really tempting to speed up every lecture video regardless of how poorly you understand the material and whether you can actually take notes at chipmunk heartbeat speed.

Pro: You can think a little longer about how you’re going to respond to the class discussion instead of blurting something out just to get participation marks.

Con: Your well-thought out response takes 1) forever to craft 2) lives for eternity on the the discussion forum, so depending on how long “forever” is for you, you may look like you blurted it out anyways and no one will ever forget it.


Pro: You don’t have to make small talk with your classmates before and after class.

Con: You begin to feel very isolated having not spoken to anyone in real-time for days - refreshing the forums to see if anyone has read your brilliant prose and responded.

Pro: You don’t have to get dressed…or even get out of bed to attend a lecture.

Con: You begin to question whether you are developing agoraphobia from never leaving the house.

Pro: You can finish an entire degree while working full-time.

Con: You haven’t slept or seen a movie in 5 years.

Re-learning grade school science

When starting this blog project, I thought, "what do I need to learn to be more successful in business?", and quantitative analysis and statistics instantly jumped to mind. I have been repressing my need to learn statistics for my desire to not learn statistics since high school math class.

So imagine my chagrin/relief when I was finally forced/able to take a research methodology course that included discussions of quantitative methodology and statistical analysis. It's like a general entry into the world of statistics, but not as scary as a full on stats course. Over the next few posts, I will write about some of the things that I learned about quantitative research methods, which is fortuitous timing because I have to study for the final exam.

First things first, I basically had to re-learn basic science concepts. It turns out that my grade 3 teacher lead me astray on the basic science concept, variables, when we were growing peas in science class and she said that the independent variables were the things that you manipulated to see how the plant would grow: like sunlight, water, soil, etc. Then she said that the dependent variable is the thing that you don't change - like the pot that the plant is in. WRONG. The dependent variable is the plant. It is the thing that changes as the independent variable is manipulated. 

I basically had to unlearn everything I know about science and then re-learn it thanks to her.

In addition to the independent variable and the dependent variable, there is also an intervening variable. The intervening variable is changed by the independent variable and then the intervening variable turns around and causes change in the dependent variable.

For example, we've all heard that people with higher levels of education have higher incomes. However, this can't quite be true because I have 7 years of university education under my belt and currently my salary is $0.00 because I don't have a job. The intervening variable here is occupation and the idea is that when you're more educated, you can get a better job, which results in a higher income.

Lastly, there are external, extraneous, or confounding variables which the scientist can't really control for but may still have an impact on the experiment. These are also called uncontrolled variables.

Another concept that I missed/forgot about entirely is the hypothesis. I remember it being a statement of what the scientist predicts is going to happen, which is somewhat true, but what no one ever mentioned to me is that hypotheses are always in pairs: the null hypothesis and the alternate hypothesis.

The null hypothesis is always stated in negative terms. "The independent variable will not affect any changes in the dependent variable", "the heat setting on my curling iron will have no effect on how long my curls last", "Miley Cyrus' cd sales are not related to Iron Maiden's cd sales". 

The null hypothesis is paired with an alternate hypothesis, which is basically just the null hypothesis stated in exactly the opposite terms: like reverse psychology, or what I would say in response to everything my brother ever said ever.

"The independent variable will affect changes on the dependent variable", "the heat setting on my curling iron will have an effect on how long my curls last", "Miley's cd sales are related to Iron Maiden's cd sales".

Why is it important to know about hypotheses and variables for statistics? Because when doing statistical tests with quantitative data, you have to have variables, otherwise you would have nothing to test. You also have to have a hypothesis otherwise you won't really know what your test results are saying.

Next up...what exactly is a beta coefficient and other things to know when reading published statistical research.