Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are the new thing. The creations of technology titans at prestigious universities
Columnists such as the New York Times’s Thomas Friedman wax lyrical about the possibilities. Words such as “transformational,” “disruptive,” “radical,” “irreversible,” and “inevitable” appear
Why all of these disruptions?
Faculty resistance to MOOCs is growing.
If MOOCs were offered as an experiment, as an approach to be tested and evaluated and refined, that would be one thing. But MOOCs are being sold, hustled really, as the best and brightest breakthrough since the printing press.
Colleges strapped for cash are already cutting staff, introducing MOOCs, and hoping for the best. Once the instructors have been removed and the budgets have been trimmed, it will be difficult to return to what we could call a more relational approach to education.
we have long known what to do and are now suffering from the abandonment of the good methods we once pioneered and practiced.
The once-stable financial foundation of the nation’s education system has collapsed.
Two thirds of the more than one million faculty members in the nation are adjuncts
American students now have nearly $900 billion in outstanding student loans,
the “Finnish miracle”
Teaching jobs are more sought-after than medicine, law, business, or high-tech careers.
The Finnish emphasis on the “supply side” of the education experience—the recruitment, training, and support of teachers—is striking.
In every successful educational culture, something bigger and deeper than market efficiency or ideological assertions from government motivates those involved.
Why are universities 'ripe for disruption'? Their mission has been undercut by (1) political demands for reform, (2) pressures to cut costs, (3) "smothering student debt loads", and (4) "mistaken priorities". The result has been the abandonment of good methods, disconnection from the community which gave it life, and the loss of central purpose.
Enter the MOOC.
Dr. Michael Power from Laval speaks to a group at Memorial about the need for a "major redirection" for online education that blends priorities of students (accessibility), faculty (quality), and admin. (cost effectiveness).
"In an effort to reduce costs for students, the College of Education and Human Development has created this catalog of open textbooks to be reviewed by faculty members"
"A leading platform for the popular "massive open online courses" offered by elite universities is moving into a new realm: the expansive field of continuing education for teachers."
"Which of these (and other) influences will prove to be merely incremental, 'sustaining innovations' and which will be 'step changes'? Which will turn out to be 'game changing,' disruptive innovations and which merely local perturbations in the ecosystem? The impact of each will become apparent as the landscape begins to be formed as progressive layers of innovation interact with each other (together with the occasional volcanic eruption).