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Scoop.it!
This content is sponsored by HCL Technologies. The higher education world is going through an uncertain period. Rising costs, digital disruption and Via Peter Mellow 
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Scoop.it!
Educators who have not taken a MOOC (Massively Open Online Course) and do not understand their history, are currently writing about these courses which is causing them to be inaccurately represented in the press. The main problem is there is all the publicity around Coursera and Edx that ignores other kinds of MOOCs. [...] "MOOCs, on the other hand, are more like fancy textbooks. They are all about the mass market and not the rich connectivity that established online courses offer their limited collection of students." Via Dr. Susan Bainbridge
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"The fight over MOOCs isn’t about the value of college; a good chunk of the four thousand institutions you haven’t heard of provide an expensive but mediocre education."
Comments: longish piece but a very good read. Bottom line: make sure universities and colleges don't go the way the music industry went when they saw mp3 coming and yet choose to ignore it. MOOCs are a serious threat (and opportunity).
Clay Shirky starts with the mp3 story and Napster, then introduces MOOCs as a similar phenomenon. They are similar in that they also beat the 'cost disease': education doesn't scale well, thus becoming ever more expensive relative to products and services that do scale (anything that can be mass produced, cars, computers, but not musical performances). He then goes on to point out that the Harvards of this world have deep enough pockets to be safe. Indeed, for them MOOCs are a marketing instrument. The institutions that should be worried are the non-ivy-league universities, some of which apparantly are better at producing loan defaults than graduates. Even qualitywise, not just in terms of price, MOOCs might offer a beter educational experience than these instutions. And he concludes by saying that "In the academy, we lecture other people every day about learning from history. Now its our turn, and the risk is that we’ll be the last to know that the world has changed, because we can’t imagine—really cannot imagine—that story we tell ourselves about ourselves could start to fail. Even when it’s true. Especially when it’s true." (peter sloep, @pbsloep; thanks Seb Schmoller for alerting me to this) Via Peter B. Sloep
Peter B. Sloep's comment,
November 14, 2012 4:52 AM
Found it good article too. The situation in the US is much worse than I suspected. Actually, MOOCs start to make sense then. That also points to the weaker part of the article. Although we should of course learn from the past, what is the lesson to be learnt? Shirky suggests to avoid MOOCs, but may be we only need to make sure they are not run by venture capital.
's comment November 14, 2012 6:47 AM
this, to me, resembles the proprietary application vs free version situation, Apple or Microsoft vs linux.
Peter B. Sloep's comment,
November 14, 2012 4:30 PM
@plerudulier I agree, there are similarities. If you want to explore what the open source movement could have to offer to open content, read Steven Weber's the success of open source. Although it is only about open source, it has got many valuable lessons.
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Scoop.it!
I just finished teaching a Massive Online Open Class (MOOC) titled “Computational Investing, Part I” via coursera.org. 53,000 people “enrolled,” which is to say they clicked... Via Dr. Susan Bainbridge
Top Free Classes's comment,
January 12, 2013 1:57 AM
Students' reviews tell different story and clearly explain low completion rate for this course. http://www.topfreeclasses.com/course/7122
Peter Bryant's curator insight,
January 14, 2013 10:27 AM
A case study for the impact of learning design on student achievement, a critical KPI for a lot of institutions
Scoop.it!
Three important takeaways about the current state of this growing trend. Fifty-eight percent of faculty surveyed feel pessimistic about online education. Administrators, on the other hand, are overwhelmingly excited about teaching students over the Internet, with more than 80 percent indicating their optimism. It’s easy to see why: Online education programs are a revenue stream for cash-strapped schools. At the same time, they redefine the professor’s role in a way that may be difficult for some teachers to accept.
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"EPIC 2020, stands for the proposition that the education of the world will change dramatically for the better during this decade. The two movies that follow and this site hope to provide tools that shatter the paradigm that the future will be anything like the past as well as facilitate discussion and accelerate actions to bring about the transformation of the education of the world."
Comment: published in May this year but missed by me then, the 10 minute video narrative starts by saying that the in the year 2020 most colleges and universities no longer exist. A story unfolds that begins with the success of the Khan Academy and Udacity, that predicts a merger between Apple buyes Amazon ('AppleZone') to boost the iTunesU, to which Google reacts with providing access to services that 'know what you know' and on the basis thereof 'predict what you need to know". In 2020 this revolution - the domination of global education by Apple and Google is complete, all universities and colleges have gone, except for those who cater for the rich and compete on the quality of food and leisure they provide. Watch it, your 10 minutes are well spent! (peter sloep, @pbsloep) Via Peter B. Sloep
Peter B. Sloep's comment,
November 11, 2012 1:21 AM
No, not really, but I am not sure either. Note that the commoditization of education is something that appeals to venture capitalists, see their funding of MOOC providers Udacity, Coursera. Also LMS providers (Blackboard) don't want to miss this boat. And then the parallel with the music, film and book industries is forceful, even though they rely much less on interaction than education does. Finally, note that Apple (iTunesU) Google (their MOOC platform, forgot the name) are already involved. Let's put it this way, if universities are in financial trouble because of dwindling funding through governments and private capital with deep pockets gets involved. Is their a way they can be stopped?
's comment November 11, 2012 4:31 AM
I'm been thinking about that myself especially after realizing that many of those MOOC evangelists were actually teachers themselves. Although I perfectly understand the interest for students wannabes to get access to education no matter their financial contraints as well the willingness of some teachers to share with as many as possible i couldn't help thinking that by doing so the latter were, in a way, sawing off the branch they sit on.
Peter B. Sloep's comment,
November 11, 2012 6:04 AM
Sawing of the branch: yes, that is a recurring theme in the posts that scoop.it collects for me. Also, just today I read a story about a student who echoed what you say: what are you nagging about, this is a wonderful opportunity for students (although she acknowledges that it is not without dangers; see http://tiny.cc/povlnw
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