MOOCs, SPOCs and next generation Open Access Learning

Keynote presentation given at the third Computer Science Education Research Conference (CSERC) (http://www.ou.nl/cserc) at Arnhem, Netherlands today by Fred Martin. Fred gave an overview of recent MOOC developments. He acknowledged that there are good points, such as MOOCs often being taught by famous professors and the idea to cut up the material taught in bite-sized chunks. But he also identified four serious problems: i) MOOCs embody an information transfer driven pedagogy; ii) it is a fallacy to believe that, since they come out of elite universities, MOOC quality is uniformly high; iii) they promise access for underprivileged people but can't really deliver on this; and iv) finally they are viewed by US politicians as a means to lower the cost of education.  Even though it is something that particularly, perhaps even uniquely, applies to the USA, I find the fourth point particularly worrying. If you legally forbid tax hikes so they can't even keep pace with compensation for inflation, as is done in California, then inevitably students at universities and community colleges (or their parents) will have to foot that bill themselves. Hailing MOOCs as the solution to this problem of the rising cost of education almost, as one Californian senator does, is misleading at best as you refuse to identify the real problem, it would seem to me. (@pbsloep)