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We should be talking to other countries to see what they want before forcing our open American education on them...interesting read.

Corey Davis' thoughts about what makes an online course good, and what makes it "open", should be worth following.

Professors in the philosophy department at San Jose State University wrote the following letter to make a direct appeal to Michael Sandel, a Harvard professor whose MOOC on "Justice" they were being encouraged to use as part of the San Jose State curriculum. (See a related article.)

The recent wave of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) has highlighted the potential for making educational offerings accessible at a global level. The attention MOOCs have received is well deserved, but it belies the fact that various forms of online education have existed for many years.

<< NOTE: This is an ACTIVIST course, with MOOCs not just the platform but also the subject matter for our online conversations. For example, I am very excited about what we will all learn from a global forum directed at the question: "What is the history of defunding public education in YOUR country in YOUR lifetime?" >> The quote above struck me. Having read this course description makes me wonder, if MOOCs can not also be used a bit differently, to further open up the door to the international arena to our students on campus. I have recently been doing a lot of reading on transcultural literacy and competence, which focuses on being able to successfully navigate cultural differences between any culture and the own. Businesses today train their top executives to be transcultural, being able to work anywhere, and manage and lead in any country. I know foreign language curricula have not been very responsive in adjusting to this new need from firms. To full fill this demand, schools would have to push students to gain competence in multiple languages and cultures, on a more shallow level, instead of the mastery that is demanded in the current curricula in one language and culture. Since most institutions claim, that they promote global citizenship, maybe there is a way of assigning groups, and encouraging international and cross cultural communication between the students on campus, and those enrolled in the MOOC from where ever they might be located. I know that managing this, and keeping on top of the conversation partners could be a night mare, and that it doesn't entirely fit into the MOOC frame work, at least the way I understand it at the moment, but I'd love to hear what everyone else i thinking.

Some very interesting reflections. Two stood out for me: 1: A missing forum element: "The worst thing was getting behind and being unable to catch up. There was no forum on which to discuss this, and I was not comfortable sharing with strangers," 2. Students wanting talking heads: "the developers of Edinburgh's e-learning course opted against having the content driven by audiovisual footage of lectures delivered to camera, choosing instead to curate open-source online content, including YouTube footage and academic papers. The decision proved unpopular with some students, Knox says, as they had been expecting to see professors imparting knowledge as they would in a lecture theatre."

I watched most of this. I liked the format of the webinar itself.

Millions of students have signed up for massive open online courses, and hundreds of universities are offering some form of Web-based curriculum. Most students aren't paying much for these classes, if they're paying anything at all. So where is all that knowledge-and all the cash-coming from?

A report published Monday by Moody's Investors Service says that the spread of massive open online courses, or MOOCs, is "credit positive" for universities that offer them but "credit negative" for the majority of lesser-known institutions that lack a prominent brand name.

Karen Head is an assistant professor in the Georgia Institute of Technology's School of Literature, Media, and Communication, and director of the university's Communication Center. She reports periodically on her group's efforts to develop and offer a massive open online course in freshman composition.

"the author examines lessons from massive open online courses (MOOCs) for small liberal arts colleges (LACs) in the United States. While some consider MOOCs a threat to LACs, they can also be seen as a provocation to spur small institutions to improve their offerings and assert their place in the higher education landscape. The paper examines how LACs might draw on the best tools, approaches, and structures emerging from the MOOC revolution in order to help students build lifelong learning habits."

Another free, online academy.