Networked Learning - MOOCs and more

This articl4 is an attempt to go beyond the hype and assess what MOOCs really could mean for (US) education. It starts with a bit of history, including 'predictions' by Harvard's Clayton Christensen and by Nathan Harding on the bankruptcy of the current university system. It then continues with an inventory of what may have contributed to the MOOCs' rapidly increased popularity: college is in trouble anyway, the credit card debt is topped by the student loan debt, the flipped classroom is as good (or bad) as the teacher who does the flipping (with MOOCs being flipped classrooms taken to its logical conclusion). Amidst worries about equal access to higher education and the quality of MOOCs if they become widespread, Westerberg list 16 thoughts about what MOOCs might achieve. These really are intuitions about what the future might bring, useful intuitions in that they allow us to be prepared for the future (and thus ready to adjust its course).

Not all of her thoughts are original - such as MOOCs stimulate thinking about pedagogy, about online affordances, about knowledge sharing - but how could they in such a much discussed area? Original are the intuitions that MOOCs sharpen our intuitions as to what we do badly in schools, what the importance is of teachers and one-to-one interactions, and what is wrong with college.

I found this a stimulating article. Even though a substantial part of it is specific to the US (not even North-American) situation) and does not directly apply elsewhere in the world, it might soon. In the UK student fees have gone up tremendously this year, for example, so a student loan debt is in the making there too, it would seem. Elsewhere, governments fighting increasing deficits might consider the same solutions, with the same dire consequences. (@pbsloep)