I went to enroll in the three other Harvard poetry online classes (because I've become like an online class hoarder). To say Harvard's poetry Moocs are classes is overstating, however, because they’re just archived materials from past MOOCs.
I was highly perturbed to have their site ask me for a five dollar donation for each course. I was annoyed for these reasons:
- The class represents itself as a free MOOC, (“HarvardX—Free Courses from Harvard University” and “edX/Free online courses from the world’s best universities”), and this gesture feels like trying to have it both ways.
– The Walt Whitman class was good, but not as good as the ModPo MOOC from the University of Pennsylvania which, to date, has never asked me for any money. If anybody should get my measly five dollars, ModPo deserves the money for the blood and sweat put into those gargantuan efforts.
– None of the features that would actually cost them anything are available anymore: they're not reviewing your work, the annotation tool is turned off and there are no active forums to maintain or contribute to. It's just readings and videos. Again, ModPo is so much more active and so much more free.
– I’m not opposed to donating cash to worthy causes but Harvard–you have a bigger endowment than God. Please refrain from asking the pleebs for change. At least the robber barons gave us free libraries. Jeesh.
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