MOOCs have had two great benefits. First they have shaken up the universities, which hopefully will lead them to address the educational issues they have avoiding dealing with for a long time. Second, they do provide access to people who would otherwise have none.
Nevertheless, I see them as an experimental and temporary phenomena. As Bruce and others have noted, they are far from perfect. Some of these problems may be solved in time but others I doubt can be solved. Most striking is that none of the entities providing MOOCs have a sustainable business model. They are being supported by foundations, such as the Gates Foundation with the Khan Academy, or as experiments by some of the richer universities, such as MIT and Stanford. That is not a sustainable model. Second, MOOCs, while helping some highly motived students who lack other resources such as the examples of a few bright students on Pakistan that we often see referred to in the media, they do not address the unmet needs of most poor students, both in the US and elsewhere. If we are serious about providing equal opportunity, MOOCs are a tiny part of the solution. Ed __________ Ed Angel Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab) Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico 1017 Sierra Pinon Santa Fe, NM 87501 505-984-0136 (home) [email protected] 505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel On Jan 21, 2013, at 12:11 PM, Bruce Sherwood wrote: > All of which is true, Owen, but I'm afraid you're making the natural mistake > of extrapolating from your own interests, experiences, and high capabilities. > The people like you and others on this list are in the world at large a set > of measure zero, albeit a set we don't want to neglect or fail to nurture, > and MOOCs are a way for an exceptionally bright rather poor kid in Pakistan > to educate herself or himself. The vast majority of US college students do > not have the discipline and burning desire to know that may be required to > succeed in distance learning. > > Bruce > > > On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 10:20 AM, Owen Densmore <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm not surprised MOOCs have a high dropout rate: they're designed that way. > You sign up for 2-3 of them and stay in the one you like most. > > MOOCs are likely to have a great impact on the firewalled papers problem > (JSTOR etc) by providing enough clout to build their own open repositories. > > And even tho MOOCs are the buzz now, there is also a lot on sites like Kahn > Academy which are not courses in the usual sense but a learn on your own pace > site. In its own way, it may be even more revolutionary and one of the heros > of the JSEverywhere revolution has gotten involved (John Reisig > https://github.com/jeresig). John's work is likely to have a huge effect on > the actual course-ware world. > > -- Owen > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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