41–50 of 63 posts
Universities are for institutionalized learning, research, and credentialing.
MOOCs are for supplemental learning afterward.
A person really should continue taking classes and learning for professional development and personal enrichment throughout his or her career. MOOCs are fantastic for that. I don't really see them as ever being a suitable replacement for an undergraduate education, though.
Charging some $3000 per class when many classes are little more than the content of a borrowed $30 book will, with a little social media technology, culminate in a teacher loaning the books to 100x his usual class population, charging 2% the usual per student cost, and coming out of the session with more money, more successful students (though perhaps a lower percentage), and the ire of anyone else who didn't pull off this stunt first.
The long-term consequences of prolific government-promoted-and-backed loans & grants skewed the educational economy so much that the correction will be dramatic and dire - and the correction, however many may dislike it, is unavoidable thanks to the nature of supply-and-demand. Such economic meddling should be avoided in any market for exactly such reasons: there will be a correction to the natural norm, and the longer that correction is held off and the process distorted, the more destructive the correction will be ... but the correction will happen.
"Learn from the best people in your field" is just as good a pitch with MOOCs as without. But it becomes much harder to see what justifies the fees at a mostly teaching (or mediocre research) university unless the quality of tuition is excellent.
Many in Europe are eyeing it as a possible opening. If U.S. academia implodes over its teaching-related parts (tuition/etc.), perhaps accelerated by MOOCs, will it take the research dominance of U.S. academia down with it, too? As least in Scandinavia, we don't feel MOOCs are a huge threat to us, because there is no tuition, so there is no real financial reason for students to prefer MOOCs. Maybe some will out of per…
I only skimmed this article, but I don't see how this argument works. US "academia" (in the sense of the top handful of universities in any given field) isn't supported by student tuition in any meaningful way. It's supported mostly by government grants to the science departments and by alumni giving (typically buffered by a large endowment foundation) to make up the slack. Only schools with no graduate programs (i.e…
Many in Europe are eyeing it as a possible opening. If U.S. academia implodes over its teaching-related parts (tuition/etc.), perhaps accelerated by MOOCs, will it take the research dominance of U.S. academia down with it, too? As least in Scandinavia, we don't feel MOOCs are a huge threat to us, because there is no tuition, so there is no real financial reason for students to prefer MOOCs. Maybe some will out of per…
I only skimmed this article, but I don't see how this argument works. US "academia" (in the sense of the top handful of universities in any given field) isn't supported by student tuition in any meaningful way. It's supported mostly by government grants to the science departments and by alumni giving (typically buffered by a large endowment foundation) to make up the slack. Only schools with no graduate programs (i.e…
You mean like this? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Abdullah_University_of_Sci...
$10 billion endowment: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1204482....
MOOCS are nice as a kind of podcast when they are on a n interesting subject. That being said I don't see them replacing academia until three big problems are solved. The first is the value added problem, at the end of the day they aren't better than normal lectures and are actually a bit worse. It's funny that even the most innovate institutions have accomplished little more than putting lectures up online. Lectures…
True, however I see the value in replacing horrible lectures. I haven't seen a MOOC with truly awful video lectures, yet.
However I personally attended classes where both the prof and the TA for all practical purposes didn't speak English. Given a well written syllabus and a non-MOOC lecture series like the MIT OCW calculus where you can search and skip around and pick the lecture to match your syllabus, you don't really need an English speaking prof or TA...
"if they plan to replace colleges" higher ed was originally an aspirational good where the smart and non-rich aspired to hang out with the rich. I don't think allowing any idiot to watch videos for free is quite the same business model.
Also I think it weird that most of the people discussing MOOC credentialing have clearly never heard of technical certificates. You can always identify the "insider techies" vs the "outsiders" by how people who don't know what the acronym CCNA stand for are mystified by how credentialing could happen, in contrast to the guys who got their CCNA in the 90s consider it merely business as usual and roll their eyes... another "future is already here, just not evenly distributed". Its hard to believe around a decade ago I was doing CCNA and CCNP tests online at prometric or whatever it was called. I see no particular reason prometric or whoever cannot offer a 32 test package where you get a BSCS equiv if you pass them all. If you eliminate the education and stick to training, thus eliminating the liberal arts classes, and skip the "see spot run" intro classes, a BSCS training equivalent is probably more like 10 to 15 tests not 32.
One big problem is Cisco tests used to be something like $250 and that kind of credentialing cost is rapidly approaching old fashioned school tuition.
Books accomplish pretty much the same thing as moocs, yet the academy survived the invention of the printing press. I'm sure moocs will have their place, but I think fears about the destruction of academia are a little exaggerated.
It is rather reminiscent of claims the VCR would destroy Hollywood back in the 70s/80s. Complete with the (hidden?) assumption that the existing business model is worth saving, that useless jobs must be saved at any cost, anti-technological progress rants...
I hold especially dearly edx courses (though I'm doing something at udacity and Stanford), which are "semi-self-paced", i.e. there is freedom, when and where you want to listen to them, say a bathtube after a long day. But there is also a stick in the form of (rather hard) homework and exams with a long but hard deadline. Maybe I'm too little self-disciplined, but those deadlines do help me with following the course. BTW, I've totally failed CS50x where deadlines are voluntary.
With my professional work and family duties I would never be able to attend a normal course during the day (in addition to a transatlantic travel to Boston). In addition, I don't need to engage in 4/5 courses at a time like I would have to at the university. On the other hand, the cost is not that much of the problem for me and I would probably be able to pay for the course or at least the final exam, which is how I suppose they are willing to monetize in the future. Of course, provided it's nowhere near $27k tuition ;)
To sum it up, I think there are rather few people that choose an MOOC instead of going to the university providing the MOOC, where "choose" means a real choice of people that could afford it and would be admitted. However, for the rest of us it is of an immense value.