A MOOC Delusion: Why Visions to Educate the World Are Absurd - WorldWise. The following is a guest post by Ghanashyam Sharma, an assistant professor in writing and rhetoric at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. —————————————————————————————— As The Chronicle recently reported, perhaps the most prominent motivation among professors at prestigious universities for teaching massively open online courses, or MOOCs, is “altruism—a desire to increase access to higher education worldwide.” In itself, the desire to increase access to quality education for millions across the world is a laudable one. But I don’t share the delusion that seems to be the basis for the excitement over MOOCs among my colleagues here in the United States. Let me explain why I used such a strong word as “delusion” with the help of a brief personal story. However, all that confidence disappeared when I thought about entering the classroom and facing a roomful of bright students in a strikingly different academic system.
[Wikimedia Creative commons image by DTR] Return to Top. A MOOC Delusion: Why Visions to Educate the World Are Absurd - WorldWise. Duke’s future in online education still in limbo. By Emma Baccellieri, Duke Chronicle Following the Arts and Sciences Council’s April 25 vote, the University withdrew from a contract with Internet education company 2U and left Semester Online, a consortium of universities offering courses via the 2U platform.
But the faculty’s decision not to participate in the program does not indicate a stop to the University’s involvement with online education—far from it, say faculty and administrators. “We’re just beginning,” said Thomas Robisheaux, chair of the Arts and Sciences Council and Fred W. Schaffer professor of history. “I see this as just the first step in a lively discussion where there are going to be many different solutions proposed, and we’re going to have to maybe try some—some may work, some may not work.” Venture Capital Needed for ‘Broken’ U.S. Education, Thrun Says. Venture-capital firms are showing greater interest in U.S. higher education because as a system, it’s no longer working, said Sebastian Thrun, co-founder of online learning company Udacity Inc.
“Education is broken. Face it,” said Thrun, a Stanford University research professor who helped create Google Inc.’s self-driving car. “It is so broken at so many ends, it requires a little bit of Silicon Valley magic,” he said in an interview today at Bloomberg’s Next Big Thing summit in Half Moon Bay, California. Udacity, which has received funding from Andreessen Horowitz and Charles River Ventures, is among providers of massive open online courses, or MOOCs, that are sweeping across higher education. Competitor Coursera Inc., started by two other Stanford computer-science professors, has backing from New Enterprise Associates and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
EdX, a third provider, was formed last year by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Pedagogy of MOOCs | Paul Stacey. The Pedagogy of MOOCs May 11, 2013, 12:08 pm Filed under: Creative Commons, Innovation, MOOC, Open Educational Resources (OER) | Tags: Coursera, DS106, edX, Learning and Knowledge Analytics, NovoEd, OpenupEd, pedagogy, PLENK, Social Media & Open Education, Udacity There is a great deal of energy, enthusiasm, and change happening in today’s education sector.
Existing and new education providers are leveraging the Internet, ICT infrastructure, digital content, open licensing, social networking, and interaction to create new forms of education. Open Educational Resources (OER) (including open textbooks), Open Access, and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have all gained traction as significant drivers of education innovation. MOOCs in particular are stimulating widespread discussion around the potential to reach and serve hundreds of thousands of learners who would otherwise not have access to education. Like all of you I’ve been tracking MOOC’s with great interest. Be as open as possible. Essay suggests that MOOCs are losing their original worthy goals.
The recent announcement from the California State University System regarding its embrace of edX massive open online courses (MOOCs) is interesting and depressing at the same time. As with many aspects of the MOOC phenomenon, it comes packaged with good and bad aspects bundled up together. Instructors will offer a "special 'flipped' version of an electrical engineering course ... where students watch online lectures from Harvard and MIT at home. " So the good is the flipped part because it's more interactive and dynamic and there's less lecture-based didacticism in the classroom due to watching videos at home? Really? The 1970s just called: they want their Open University courses back. This model perhaps moves the Cal State system forward as it offers more accessibility to content for working adults in a hybrid format.
The MOOC spirit has been eroded by institutions and individuals who see an easy way to sound (or just seem) tech-online savvy. Australia falling behind in ICT. Australia has dropped one place in the World Economic Forum’s latest global IT report, slipping from 17th to 18th spot overall. Despite efforts in the past decade to improve ICT infrastructure in developing economies, there remains a new digital divide in how countries harness ICT to deliver competitiveness and well-being, according to the 12th edition of The Global Information Technology Report, released by the World Economic Forum.
Published under the theme ‘Growth and Jobs in a Hyperconnected World’, the report suggests that national policies in some developing economies are failing to translate ICT investment into tangible benefits in terms of competitiveness, development and employment. This is in addition to the profound digital divide that already exists between advanced and developing economies in access to digital infrastructure and content. The ‘Networked Readiness Index’ comprises eleven components. Australia’s position on each: