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Doris Reeves-Lipscomb

Sebastian Thrun and Udacity: Distance learning is unsuccessful for most students. - 0 views

  • The problem, of course, is that those students represent the precise group MOOCs are meant to serve. “MOOCs were supposed to be the device that would bring higher education to the masses,” Jonathan Rees noted. “However, the masses at San Jose State don’t appear to be ready for the commodified, impersonal higher education that MOOCs offer.” Thrun’s cavalier disregard for the SJSU students reveals his true vision of the target audience for MOOCs: students from the posh suburbs, with 10 tablets apiece and no challenges whatsoever—that is, the exact people who already have access to expensive higher education. It is more than galling that Thrun blames students for the failure of a medium that was invented to serve them, instead of blaming the medium that, in the storied history of the “correspondence” course (“TV/VCR repair”!), has never worked. For him, MOOCs don’t fail to educate the less privileged because the massive online model is itself a poor tool. No, apparently students fail MOOCs because those students have the gall to be poor, so let’s give up on them and move on to the corporate world, where we don’t have to be accountable to the hoi polloi anymore, or even have to look at them, because gross.
  • SG_Debug && SG_Debug.pagedebug && window.console && console.log && console.log('[' + (new Date()-SG_Debug.initialTime)/1000 + ']' + ' Bottom of header.jsp'); SlateEducationGetting schooled.Nov. 19 2013 11:43 AM The King of MOOCs Abdicates the Throne 7.3k 1.2k 101 Sebastian Thrun and Udacity’s “pivot” toward corporate training. By Rebecca Schuman &nbsp; Sebastian Thrun speaks during the Digital Life Design conference on Jan. 23, 2012, in Munich. Photo by Johannes Simon/Getty Images requirejs(["jquery"], function($) { if ($(window).width() < 640) { $(".slate_image figure").width("100%"); } }); Sebastian Thrun, godfather of the massive open online course, has quietly spread a plastic tarp on the floor, nudged his most famous educational invention into the center, and is about to pull the trigger. Thrun—former Stanford superprofessor, Silicon Valley demigod, and now CEO of online-course purveyor Udacity—just admitted to Fast Company’s openly smitten Max Chafkin that his company’s courses are often a “lousy product.” Rebecca Schuman Rebecca Schuman is an education columnist for Slate. Follow This is quite a “pivot” from the Sebastian Thrun, who less than two years ago crowed to Wired that the unstemmable tide of free online education would leave a mere 10 purveyors of higher learning in its wake, one of which would be Udacity. However, on the heels of the embarrassing failure of a loudly hyped partnership with San Jose State University, the “lousiness” of the product seems to have become apparent. The failures of massive online education come as no shock to those of us who actually educate students by being in the same room wit
  • nd why the answer is not the MOOC, but the tiny, for-credit, in-person seminar that has neither a sexy acronym nor a potential for huge corporate partnerships.
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    Slate article by Rebecca Schuman, November 19, on why MOOCs a la Udacity do not work except maybe for people who are already privileged, enjoy fast access to the Internet, have good study habits and time management skills, and time to craft their schedules to fit in MOOCs among other assets/strengths.
Doris Reeves-Lipscomb

Learnlets - 0 views

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    Learnlets is Clark Quinn's blog. This is what he wrote on January 26 about Sharing Failure. The closing paragraphs are the most interesting to me. Excerpt: "Now, just getting people sharing isn't necessarily sufficient. Just yesterday (as I write), Jane Bozarth pointed me towards an article in the New Yorker (at least the abstract thereof) that argues why brainstorming doesn't work. I've said many times that the old adage "the room is smarter than the smartest person in the room" needs a caveat: if you manage the process right. There are empirical results that guide what works from what doesn't, such as: having everyone think on their own first; then share; focus initially on divergence before convergence; make a culture where it's safe, even encouraged, to have a diversity of viewpoints; etc. No one says getting a collaborating community is easy, but like anything else, there are ways to do it, and do it right. And here too, you can learn from the mistakes of others…"
Doris Reeves-Lipscomb

People who need people. | More or Less Bunk - 0 views

  • Anyway, where does this leave us? Does it mean MOOCs are dead? Not really. It just means they aren’t the massive world revolution none of us thought they were anyway. And it also suggests that universities, far from being swept away by MOOCs, are in fact the home of MOOCs. You see, MOOCs make sense as an adjunct to university business, they don’t really make sense as a stand alone offering.
  • It’s also worth noting the incredible irony here. MOOCs were supposed to be the device that would bring higher education to the masses. However, the masses at San Jose State don’t appear to be ready for the commodified, impersonal higher education that MOOCs offer without the guidance that living, breathing professors provide to people negotiating its rocky shores for the first time. People need people.
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    Love this cogent blog post by Jonathan Rees on why MOOCs are failing --because people need the social supports of learning online or in the classroom. published November 15, 2013.
Doris Reeves-Lipscomb

Hey Educators, Shut Up About MOOCs Already! | Fast Company | Business + Innovation - 0 views

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    Funny and accurate blog post about MOOC oversell and overfailure of same to HE. By Dave LLorens in Fast Company. Excerpt: ..."MOOCs certainly have a point that online education will not boldly improve live learning unless it includes genuine, specific, individual interaction between students and teachers (run on sentence). That's simply a fact and something to keep in mind as online educations evolves, but it is not by any means a reason why online education "doesn't work." Yet we seem to remain focused on shiny polarizing topics of online versus offline education. MOOCs work, they don't work, etc. It sounds like what they tell you to say as extras on a set when they want a "murmur," Watermelon, cantaloupe. Watermelon cantaloupe. Rhubarb Constantinople. SUMMARY: Even today, MOOCs are the main focus of anyone in any kind of online education capacity, and MOOCs are polarizing in a way that is hurtful to the discussion. MOOCs are also (at least today), only the repackaging of and a new delivery mechanism for traditional education. Being disappointed that MOOCs haven't changed the world yet is like switching over from cassette tapes to CDs and then being disappointed when the CDs don't contain untold and unimagined wisdom. "
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