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"As part of this work, we are organizing a conference at University of Texas Arlington December 5-6, 2013: MOOCs and Emerging Educational Models: Policy, Practice, and Learning. Registration is now open. We have a great group of keynote speakers and an outstanding list of successful grantees who will also be presenting."

"These findings support some of the early hopes that MOOCs would provide a life-changing opportunity for those who are less advantaged and have limited access to education. Of course, MOOCs are still available only to people who have access to the internet, and completion rates remain low. "

"Instead of being an unstoppable force disrupting the faculty profession, MOOCs can be an opportunity to empower faculty to explore, create, and express themselves in new ways through open and digital education. To do this requires establishing the proper institutional context, one that allows for experimentation and grassroots, faculty-led initiatives to flourish. We have argued in this article that a focus on soft infrastructure - the resources, values, and affirmations that support faculty agency in experimenting with digital learning - has helped us create this context at Stanford. Our research suggests that this approach has given faculty the opportunity and autonomy to manifest their desires to share intellectual work more broadly, experiment and take pedagogical risks, express their unique teaching philosophies in new ways, and thoughtfully engage in the MOOC phenomenon on their own terms. As a result, a great number and variety of open and digital learning approaches have flourished at our institution."

"As any botanist knows, a monoculture is highly susceptible to a single pathogen. A great shakeout is under way, and MOOCs are the logical outgrowth of this push for interchangeable educational delivery. Curricula, faculty, and students are overwhelmingly indistinct, and MOOCs are simply the cheapest way to combine those elements in our economically constrained times."

An article providing an important perspective to consider when promoting or arguing for the MOOC concept.

"MOOCs are characterized by their openness, enabling anyone across the world with an Internet connection to participate.  As a result, most MOOCs have thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of participants. An online course with potentially tens of thousands of students is a very different teaching environment than face-to-face courses or even "traditional" online courses.  Teaching strategies practiced in other teaching contexts won't necessarily translate well to this context. Indeed, the sets of choices regarding learning objectives, content presentation, assessment, and instructor-to-student and student-to-student interaction are still being developed in this emergent teaching environment."

IN LITTLE MORE THAN A YEAR, discussion of the role of online learning in higher education has undergone a qualitative shift. With the launch of for-profit educational start-ups such as Coursera, Udacity, and the MIT and Harvard-founded nonprofit platform edX, Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have moved from obscure experiment to major initiative. MOOCs are online classes, generally composed of short lectures, that allow for open, often free enrollments (thousands can easily enroll in a single course), assessing students through periodic quizzes and discussion forums.

"Preliminary results of a study of 16 massive open online courses offered through the University of Pennsylvania show that only a small percentage of people who start the courses finish them-and that, on average, only half of those who register for the courses even watch the first lecture. The study, conducted by the university's Graduate School of Education, is reviewing data from about a million users of the courses, which Penn offered on the Coursera platform, from June 2012 to June 2013. Two of the seven researchers involved-Laura W. Perna, a professor of higher education, and Alan Ruby, senior fellow for international education-described the study on Thursday in a presentation at the MOOC Research Conference now under way in Arlington, Tex."

A coalition of faculty groups has declared war against online learning, particularly massive open online courses (MOOCs), because it said it believes that the fast expansion of this form of education is being promulgated by corporations - specifically for-profit colleges and universities and education technology companies - at the expense of student education and public interest.

As "MOOC mania" completely overshadows the Open Education Resource (OER) initiative of UNESCO and the Hewlett Foundation, a potentially valuable point is being overlooked. The MOOC format, as it exists today, seems especially inappropriate for degree completion by a traditional age student (18-24). It may even be a challenge for the older, post- traditional student as the issue of how learning is to be validated still has most institutions questioning the credit worthiness of such offerings.

While most of the headlines-including this one-reference MOOCs, the real issues are quite broad in scope, covering everything from whether higher education as we know it is on the verge of combusting, to big, bold experiments using technology to deliver education in transformative ways on a global scale. While the exact discussions seem to change on a constant basis, some of the current hot topics include proposed legislation in California, the swirl of possibilities around business models for so-called xMOOCs, and increased demand for production and availability of open textbooks.

"Across all geographic regions, the study found that MOOC students have high levels of educational attainment: 83 percent of those who responded said they had earned either a two- or four-year post-secondary degree, far more than international averages."

This 12 week course, starting September 10, 2012 will explore openness in education - its roots, its growing influence, and economic and systemic impact. We have adopted an open online format (massive open online courses, sometimes referred to as MOOCs...though we expect this course won't hit that "massive" target achieved by initiatives like Coursera and EDx. For a quick introduction to connectivist courses and how they work, please view the videos below.

"Current students who take the free online college courses can earn certificates of completion, but not college credit. However, if MOOCs are determined to be close enough to traditional college courses as to become eligible for academic credit, they could make higher education more affordable and accessible, Ms. Lewin writes."

"The question is not just whether MOOCs are going to disrupt traditional education, but how. Is it just about lower costs and access? Is it really going to be a Napster-like moment with entrenched "Teamsters in tweed" worried about the erosion of their research, publishing, and teaching?"

"Quality in online learning can be defined in many ways: quality of content, quality of design, quality of instructional delivery, and, ultimately, quality of outcomes. On the face of it, the organizing principles of MOOCs are at odds with widely observed best practices in online education, including those advocated by my organization, the Quality Matters Program. "

There's nothing particularly new about MOOCs. Most universities have offered online courses for many years and the basic technologies involved - video lectures, discussion forums, tests, and the like - are the same we have used with on-campus and distance students. The only difference is the scale.

What does this emerging landscape of educational delivery models look like? I have categorized the models not just in terms of modality-ranging from face-to-face to fully online-but also in terms of the method of course design (see Figure 1). These two dimensions allow a richer understanding of the new landscape of educational delivery models. Within this landscape, the following primary models have emerged: ad hoc online courses and programs, fully online programs, School-as-a-Service, educational partnerships, competency-based education, blended/hybrid courses and the flipped classroom, and MOOCs (see Figure 2).

After completing the eight-week course, however, I am optimistic that this kind of MOOC will not eat my job because it and I are not really in the same business. At Ursinus College, where I teach, the faculty and administration work individually and collectively to help our students cultivate judgment, the capacity to decide what to think or how to act in areas, like health policy, where no formula can generate the right answer. While we cannot help our students without demanding that they take an active role in their education, we also assume that they do not come in with their judgments already cultivated. College should be a transformative experience for them, and they will need guidance.

All of the issues around creating or using OER, of getting faculty towards supporting open access, of implementing inter-institutional open source software communities - all collapse before the MOOC.

"We present the concept of quad-blogging, and its potential for facilitating and enhancing peer-to-peer learning in higher education, specifically in a massive open online course (MOOC) by increasing peer engagement, promoting the practice of blogging and fostering the formation of professional learning networks through social media."