61–70 of 85 posts
> The letter is part of a brewing debate about how MOOCs might deepen the divide between wealthy universities, which produce MOOCs, and less wealthy ones, which buy licenses to use those MOOCs from providers like edX. Why are only top universities producing MOOCs anyway? Do San Jose lack any renowned classes, or just the will to MOOCify them?
> The letter is part of a brewing debate about how MOOCs might deepen the divide between wealthy universities, which produce MOOCs, and less wealthy ones, which buy licenses to use those MOOCs from providers like edX. Why are only top universities producing MOOCs anyway? Do San Jose lack any renowned classes, or just the will to MOOCify them?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a limitation: questions and answers. The place professors will have value is in direct student communication.
Questions and answers aren't uniformly distributed. The bulk of questions will be from the same small set over time. Humans are only necessary for the exceptions. While this may never go to zero, it may not justify having an expensive human around answering what are mostly predictable questions over and over for the occasional bizarre one. (And I'd bet the bizarre ones often come from further weaknesses in the previo…
...like a textbook, which obsoleted teachers over a century ago.
At the risk of setting up false dichotomies, I wonder: Will a MOOC instructor answer my emails, take a phone call, or meet with me in person? Will a MOOC instructor help me network with potential employers and internship sponsors? Will a MOOC instructor be my mentor and help me navigate an increasingly difficult job market? Will a MOOC instructor connect me to other like-minded students and professors? Will a MOOC in…
My first thought was this was another case of the "old guard" being afraid of change, but I read their letter and I actually agree with some of their points. The obvious downside is the lack of interaction with the lecturing professor. This was another point I hadn't thought of: "The thought of the exact same social justice course being taught in various philosophy departments across the country is downright scary -…
Which is why every professor writes their own books, right? It's be scary if lots of people across the country were learning from the same textbooks.
I'm sure the acronym MOOC is obvious to those in the area, but I wasn't sure what it stood for, and it seems sloppy to me that it wasn't defined in the article. All it takes is writing "Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)" the first time it was used.
Sounds about right. Salaries are the number 1 expense, so it's a great place to cut.
The coming widespread adoption of MOOCs is another great example of what Jaron Lanier calls Mass Unemployment Events. Driverless cars will be another. Together we trudge on towards a future requiring a basic minimum income.
Technology has been replacing workers for a long time, but unemployment hasn't been steadily increasing over time. The inventor of the steam shovel was accused of causing permanent unemployment with the argument "each steam shovel will replace 100 men with shovels." He replied "or 1000 men with teaspoons." These "mass unemployment events" aren't anything new, and they historically haven't caused long-lasting unemploy…
No, what they cause is long-lasting shifts in the distribution of the rewards of production to more heavily favor capital than labor, rather than causing long-lasting unemployment.
As long as people have some use in productivity, and need to work to eat (limiting price elasticity of labor supply on the low end), technology won't produce long-lasting unemployment, just, under ceteris paribus assumptions, long-lasting reductions in the ratio between the market-clearing price for the average unit of labor and the value of the total output of the economy.
This last sentence frames the discussion perfectly, and I agree with its sentiment but not the unnecessarily gloomy warning to other professors. An MOOC is a tool in the toolbox and can be used or abused. The sentiment is to not abuse this tool. The warning is to not make poor tools but is stated in an underhanded way that could derail a very healthy discussion. MOOC's have unfathomable potential as a tool for educating people in a much larger circle than rich students attending a "high quality" university and that context should not be covered up when it does not favor your rhetoric. So I am glad to hear his warnings and hope others heed them. But I also hope people continue to improve this tool in the educational tool-box. There, I fixed the last sentence of the open letter.
"Professors who care about education should strive to produce products that enhance education for students in public universities and students everywhere."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Certainly, the world's economy would have collapsed when cars came and the horse and buggy creators lost their jobs, the printing press forced manual copiers out of business, automatic telephone switches made operators lose their job, etc. (Funny story: I have a professor that was in the Center of Mass group for NASA, where they painstakingly calculated the center of mass of each object and part of the shuttle, then…
> Certainly, the world's economy would have collapsed when cars came and the horse and buggy creators lost their jobs, the printing press forced manual copiers out of business, automatic telephone switches made operators lose their job, etc. Transportation advances caused great economic difficulties from 1870-1890 [1] What happens if the hits keep coming as technological innovation accelerates and new mass employment…
I would not invest too much time into speculative futurology at this point.
I mean, if somebody brings data, we can talk about those. Without that data, I don't think anyone can predict correctly whether we will end up in
a) a dystopia with most people not being able to find work and starving or
b) a utopia where the cost of life is so low that anyone can live fully without even working.