Re: [liberationtech] MOOC'd

[Rich Kulawiec]

On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 01:17:18AM -0700, Raven Jiang CX wrote:
 My own concern lies with the fact that the a great deal of academia and
 knowledge creation is currently being funded by the inefficient tuition
 system. If the transition to MOOC is too sudden, then we might irreversibly
 damage our knowledge engines when all that money disappears from the system.

I share this concern.  Unfortunately, here in the US, education/research
is not a national priority and is very poorly funded (at all levels).
In addition, the incredible damage done by NCLB is now rippling through
the educational ecosystem, and universities now have to deal with an influx
of poorly-prepared students.  Add to this the crumbling (quite literally)
infrastructure and the mediocre (at best) pay scales for primary and
secondary teachers, the increasing (and myopic) focus on short-term
directed-for-commercial-gain research over long-term open-ended enquiry,
and we have one heck of a mess on our hands.

---rsk
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Re: [liberationtech] MOOC'd

[Raven Jiang CX]

My thoughts on this
http://soraven.com/2013/06/20/the-real-problem-with-moocs/

In short, I think that while it may be premature to go all-out on MOOCs,
many of the problems raised in terms of education quality are solvable
given time and are not good reasons for why we should not move in that
direction.

My own concern lies with the fact that the a great deal of academia and
knowledge creation is currently being funded by the inefficient tuition
system. If the transition to MOOC is too sudden, then we might irreversibly
damage our knowledge engines when all that money disappears from the system.

And as a side note, even if it were true that it will never be possible to
effectively teach philosophy through an online course (which I think is too
short sighted given future developments in HCI technology), the same is
most definitely not true for many STEM subjects whose lecture formats and
problem sets already resemble a MOOC classroom. Now imagine a future where
one can go online to take a whole bunch of rigorous and effective STEM
classes for free, or pay tens of thousands of dollars for a traditional
education to learn English literature the right way... That might just
spell the true death of the arts.

In a counter-intuitive way, I think it might even be in the philosophy
professor's interest for Silicon Valley to figure out an effective way to
teach philosophy online.




On 17 June 2013 16:45, David Johnson da...@bostonreview.net wrote:

 Dear all,

 We just ran a package of stories on MOOCs that may be of interest to list
 members.

 First, we have Stanford's Rob Reich correcting some of the excessive
 claims of proponents and critics ...

 http://bostonreview.net/us/much-ado-about-moocs

 Second, we have former Princeton President William Bowen with a critical
 assessment of their potential for education ...

 http://bostonreview.net/us/potential-online-learning

 Then we have Thomas Leddy, philosopher at San Jose State, explaining his
 negative stance towards his university's embrace of MOOCs ...

 http://bostonreview.net/us/are-moocs-good-students

 And finally we have a piece by yours truly examining the close ties
 between the president of San Jose State and Cisco and his cheerleading for
 MOOCs ...

 http://bostonreview.net/blog/tech-university-complex

 Best wishes,

 David
 --

 David V. Johnson
 Web Editor
 Boston Review
 Website: http://www.bostonreview.net
 Twitter: http://twitter.com/BostonReview

 Tumblr: http://bostonreview.tumblr.com
 Cell: (917)903-3706


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