So, You Say It's the Year of the MOOC
The New York Times says it is the year of the MOOC, so it must be. Plenty of education bloggers have said as much this year, but when the NYT says so it means it has gone more mainstream.
edX launched its first two courses in October and got 100,000 people registered. And Coursera is offering over 100 courses this fall with about 700,000 registered. Udacity says it had nearly 740,000 registrations as of August 2012.
Many MOOC registrants don't do the coursework or complete the course - lots of lurkers and dropouts - but Udacity says it still had 100,000 active registrants for their fall courses and that is enough to matter.
The Internet is what allows these courses to scale. It also allows them to be duplicated, repurposed, reoffered and made available at little or no cost.
It has not changed education. It won't be the education of 2013. But it will lead us to where education will be in the next decades.
Knowledge is not equal to education. Content is not education. If it was, all you would need is a free public library.
There has been some discussion of MOOCs and digital literacies, but most of the media attention has been
on the large numbers of students in the courses. Numbers impress people.
I have been in a few MOOCs as a student now and they have been video lectures and text. There was no interaction with the instructor. There was some interaction with other students - sometimes forced (teams), sometimes initiated naturally. Not very different from many small, online, closed courses.
Zoom out and go beyond MOOCs.
What will continue to attract students to a physical college campus and a degree? Engagement. Community. Connections with faculty and fellow students. A social life. Degrees that lead to jobs.
What has attracted students to online education and may attract them to massive open online courses? Flexibility. Social media. Low or no cost. Certificates or certification that lead to jobs.
What is missing in many online courses - no matter what size - is the engagement. And when courses go online and take on hundreds or thousands of students, engagement probably is not even a reasonable expectation.
edX launched its first two courses in October and got 100,000 people registered. And Coursera is offering over 100 courses this fall with about 700,000 registered. Udacity says it had nearly 740,000 registrations as of August 2012.
Many MOOC registrants don't do the coursework or complete the course - lots of lurkers and dropouts - but Udacity says it still had 100,000 active registrants for their fall courses and that is enough to matter.
The Internet is what allows these courses to scale. It also allows them to be duplicated, repurposed, reoffered and made available at little or no cost.
It has not changed education. It won't be the education of 2013. But it will lead us to where education will be in the next decades.
Knowledge is not equal to education. Content is not education. If it was, all you would need is a free public library.
There has been some discussion of MOOCs and digital literacies, but most of the media attention has been
on the large numbers of students in the courses. Numbers impress people.
I have been in a few MOOCs as a student now and they have been video lectures and text. There was no interaction with the instructor. There was some interaction with other students - sometimes forced (teams), sometimes initiated naturally. Not very different from many small, online, closed courses.
Zoom out and go beyond MOOCs.
What will continue to attract students to a physical college campus and a degree? Engagement. Community. Connections with faculty and fellow students. A social life. Degrees that lead to jobs.
What has attracted students to online education and may attract them to massive open online courses? Flexibility. Social media. Low or no cost. Certificates or certification that lead to jobs.
What is missing in many online courses - no matter what size - is the engagement. And when courses go online and take on hundreds or thousands of students, engagement probably is not even a reasonable expectation.
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