Education: Technical University of Munich (TUM) and Ludwig-Maximilians-Univer... - 0 views
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Claude Almansi on 07 May 17"for cooperating with the online learning provider Coursera. (...) We regard this cooperation of the Munich universities with Coursera as a marketing operation. The two universities can present themselves globally together with top international universities. Conversely, Coursera adorns itself with their names. It seems that data protection has not been given much thought. Likewise, we miss a critical discussion of who owns the content produced and who profits from it. By the way, taking Coursera courses is still voluntary for the students. This BigBrotherAward is meant as a warning to colleges and universities not to make participation in MOOCs offered by privacy-ignoring companies a mandatory way to earn study credits. Actually it's bad enough that education increasingly becomes a commodity as publicly financed institutions of higher education distribute their offerings via commercial providers. If an appropriate European MOOC platform does not exist, then it is the the universities' duty to create such a platform. By giving a BigBrotherAward to TUM and LMU Munich, we would like to remind both universities and all other education institutions that the long-term business model of such "education providers" hinges on contracts in which the students are not the customers of the MOOC provider, they are the product being sold."