"Amid the various influences that massive open online courses have had on higher education in their short life so far -- the topic of a daylong conference here Monday -- this may be among the more unexpected: The courses may be prompting some faculty to pay more attention to their teaching styles than they ever have before." - this was something that administrators from Stanford mentioned in the Educause Learning Initiatives conference when discussing the biggest benefits they had seen from developing MOOCs
"Rather than think about how "MOOCs" will influence liberal arts education, perhaps it is time to flip the question. What does traditional liberal arts education have to offer "MOOCs"? The answer remains the enduring value of education that produces critical thinkers, life-long learners and economically and politically contributing members of society. But in order to accomplish that feat, liberal arts education may have to take a lesson from MOOCs on how to generate excitement for the deployment of technology in service of inter-institutional and even international classrooms, information competency and problem-solving based courses.""