Aprendiendo a Distancia

Why the MOOC hype could still be real; and the power of pairing with analytics and big data.

The most famous result of using the MOOC platforms instead of the traditional LMSs is that the online courses offered in MOOC platforms are far easier to audit and can be audited for free. (Most of the hype around MOOCs has focused on this free auditing difference.) But this realization highlights the fact that MOOC platforms are themselves LMSs with a single differentiating feature set (enabling free auditing). And actually these free auditing features are no longer differentiators. The fact that there was really only a delta of one feature between traditional LMSs and MOOC platforms explains why so many traditional LMS providers were able to begin playing in the MOOC space so quickly (c.f. Canvas Network and Blackboard CourseSites).

It also highlights the fact that, because they are LMSs that add a single feature, MOOC platforms are simply next generation data silos. I say next generation data silos, but this really understates their ruthless efficiency. By making auditing online courses easy and free, they exponentially expand their ability to attract and capture student data, which will remain in the silo. (You might almost think of MOOCs as honeypots for education.)

But for my money, the most under-discussed result of using the MOOC platforms is the way that the branding of MOOCs is inverted from the branding of traditional online courses. In a traditional online course, the lead brand is the institution, followed by the faculty member, with little or no consideration for the LMS the course is offered in.

By contrast, with MOOCs the lead brand is the LMS – you’re taking a course on Coursera! It happens to be offered by MIT. And there is probably a list of “Course Staff” buried at the bottom of the About the Course page.

This brand inversion, which places the platform ahead of the institution or the “course staff” (we don’t use the word “faculty” any more), points to a disturbing trend.