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Colleges and professors have rushed to try a new form of online teaching known as MOOCs-short for "massive open online courses." The courses raise questions about the future of teaching, the value of a degree, and the effect technology will have on how colleges operate. Struggling to make sense of it all? On this page you'll find highlights from The Chronicle's coverage of MOOCs.

For Connectivism, the medium is the message - teaching Connectivism any other way than a MOOC is as ridiculous as buying a book about free, open text books from Amazon.Com. I hope that the critics of MOOCs take the time to actually take a course, even as a lurker - they will gain immensely from the experience, and who knows? They might even learn something.

Although there has been a long history of distance education, the creation of online education occurred just over a decade and a half ago-a relatively short time in academic terms. Early course delivery via the web had started by 1994, soon followed by a more structured approach using the new category of course management systems.1 Since that time, online education has slowly but steadily grown in popularity, to the point that in the fall of 2010, almost one-third of U.S. postsecondary students were taking at least one course online.2 Fast forward to 2012: a new concept called Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) is generating widespread interest in higher education circles. Most significantly, it has opened up strategic discussions in higher education cabinets and boardrooms about online education. Stanford, MIT, Harvard, the University of California-Berkeley, and others have thrown their support-in terms of investment, resources, and presidential backing-behind the transformative power of MOOCs and online education. National media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and The Atlantic are touting what David Brooks has called "the campus tsunami" of online education.

In what could be a major step toward bridging the gap between massive open online courses and the credentialing system that they are supposed to "disrupt," the American Council on Education on Thursday endorsed five MOOCs for credit.

Not about writing, but about how we are (1) trying to add information to and (2) trying to use information from the enormous "knowledge bubble" [my term] that we are seeing created by each MOOC.

How one professor uses a MOOC and its resources to flip his own classes.

Shimon Schocken and Noam Nisan developed a curriculum for their students to build a computer, piece by piece. When they put the course online -- giving away the tools, simulators, chip specifications and other building blocks -- they were surprised that thousands jumped at the opportunity to learn, working independently as well as organizing their own classes in the first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). A call to forget about grades and tap into the self-motivation to learn.

An introduction to massive, open, online courses (MOOC) by EDUCAUSE.

Massive Open Online Course -- still intend to do something of this nature for the final year of our QEP program 2012-2013.

Sounds like MOOCs have a bright future and are here to stay!!

This chart could apply to MOOCs or to any innovation that we bring to our teachers and that they bring to their classrooms.

Siemens' thoughts about the impact of open courses on learning and the Academy.

When we conceive of learner as knowmad, the traditional roles assigned to teacher and student become less relevant, necessary, and linear.  The knowmad is mobile and learns with anybody, anywhere, anytime.  As such, the place we now know as school may be too small and perhaps unable to contain the range of learning engagements necessary for those with nomadic tendencies.  Rather, think of the extended community--one that is physical, virtual, and blended-- as potential learning spaces that our knowmadic traveler composes, accesses, participates in, abandons, and changes.

This series of reports explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment for an interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation. The first report proposes ten innovations that are already in currency but have not yet had a profound influence on education.

With advancing online tools innovative educators are examining new ways to break out of this one-to-many model of education, through a concept called massively open online courses. The idea is to use open-source learning tools to make courses transparent and open to all, harnessing the knowledge of anyone who is interested in a topic.

A slideshow about connected knowledge and collective learning.