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article by Cathy N. Davidson, The Chronicle Review, December 10, 2012 Excerpt: "The lab means to remake education from preschool onward, adding in such fabulous open-source learning experiences as Scratch, a free online resource that has enticed more than a million kids to create and share animations, and mix and remix narratives and games while learning basic programming skills. In the words of Joi Ito, the dynamic new head of the lab, himself a famous college dropout, the key to 21st-century learning is "antidisciplinary," not just "interdisciplinary." Ito's goal is "a world of seven billion teachers," where everyone on the planet has something important to teach to someone else, and everyone does." Excerpt: "Read against Wired UK's story, the opportunity Forbes describes seems revolutionary but, in its DNA, is the opposite. The MOOC model depicted here ossifies the already outdated mission of 19th-century education. Far too many of the MOOC's championed in the article use talking heads and multiple-choice quizzes in fairly standard subject areas in conventional disciplines taught by famous teachers at elite universities. There is little that prepares students for learning in the fuzzy, merged world that Negroponte sees as necessary for thriving in the 21st century. Making courseware "massive" may dangle the eventual possibility of trillion-dollar profits (even if they have yet to materialize). But it does not "fix" what is broken in our system of education. It massively scales what's broken."

Article in The Chronicle of HE, December 17, 2012 "Coursera and its devotees simply have it wrong. The Coursera model doesn't create a learning community; it creates a crowd. In most cases, the crowd lacks the loyalty, initiative, and interest to advance a learning relationship beyond an informal, intermittent connection." Excerpt: Interactivity and customization are the fundamental advantages of online education. By using technology, we can bridge geographic divides while creating a continuing learning relationship between faculty and students, students and students, and students and the greater society. "Our goal should be to design a customized program that matches technology with a student's day-to-day objectives, not just course objectives or weekly learning objectives. We need to operate on a small scale where the online course or program is calibrated to meet the need of the individual student." Excerpt: "The MOOC model is fine for the informal student or academic dabbler, but it is not the same as attaining an education. Whether face to face or online, learning occurs when there is a thoughtful interaction between the student and the instructor. If the goal is attaining knowledge for a purpose beyond mere curiosity, then the model for online learning has to be a more complex, interactive experience. For that reason, we should be happy to cede the territory of the massification to Coursera. The business school at my institution is developing an online M.B.A. program that emphasizes the critical nature of interactivity in learning. Our next step is to design a dynamic and agile customization component that emphasizes student preferences while advancing the objectives of our institution. We are looking for partners who want to build a platform that allows for profound customization. We want to bring together institutions interested in thinking deeply about the promise of online education for delivering a remarkable learning experience, one that equals-

Interesting POV about how lack of bridging assistance in MOOCs may fall unduly heavily on learners who are not able to integrate ideas with their life experience. Quote: "Daphne Koller, promotes the "personalized" learning that a MOOC can offer. Coursera can track how each learner uses the course material and how his or her quiz performance correlates with given in-course behaviors. With that information, Coursera can guide students toward the activities that will best help them to learn: additional video lectures or a specific discussion-forum thread. I cannot customize each student's education as precisely as Coursera claims it can. But I can personalize it, in the sense that I can help students connect what they learn in my class to who they are as people-their biographies, aspirations, shortcomings. MOOC creators assume that learners' intellects are detachable from their broader life circumstances. You take the MOOC, but you're on your own in figuring out how your learning fits into the rest of your life-or how it might require changing your life. That's fine if you just need to know about analog circuits to work on a specific project. But people come to universities at all ages, with unsettled identities and life plans, or with plans that education itself will unsettle."

Blog post by Jeffrey J. Williams, Chronicle Review, December 2, 2013 This post on stratification of the teaching role in HE reminds me of our conversations from 1-2 years ago. Imagine a diorama in an American Museum of Occupations showing the evolution of the professor. The exhibit starts in the early 1800s with an austere, black-suited man in a minister's collar, perhaps looking over the shoulder of a student at a rustic desk, with a Greek text open in front of him. In the next scene, from around 1900, he morphs into a pince-nez-wearing gentleman in starched collar and cravat, at a podium delivering a lecture. The professor of 1950 adopts the rumpled bearing of a tweed jacket, pointing with his pipe to a poem or a physics equation on a chalkboard. In the next frame, circa 1990, she wears jeans and is sitting in front of a computer screen. How would the diorama represent the professor of 2020? Some observers predict that she won't exist: In the memorable phrase of Frank Donoghue, a professor of English at Ohio State University, we are living in the age of "the last professors." Less apocalyptic commentators say the professor has experienced "deprofessionalization." Both views try to capture the squeeze on professorial jobs, but they misrecognize fundamental aspects of the changes that have occurred. Rather than extinction, we have seen the steady expansion of academic labor over the past century, and rather than "deskilling," we are undergoing more rather than less professionalization. What has been going on is what sociologists call "differentiation" and "stratification." We are in the era of the Great Stratification. We have tended to see the professor as a single figure, but he is now a multiple being, of many types, tasks, and positions. Given that there are more than 1.4 million college faculty members in the United States, it is clear that they are not disappearing. But the all-purpose professor has faded. We have tended to see the professor as a s

Very interesting articles on how MOOCs and people completing them are building respect for their accomplishment with employers. Also an interesting point by Thrun on '"there are a huge number of willing and eager lifelong learners that are underserved" by higher education.'