Comments on: Didn’t any of these people live through the dot-bomb of 2000?

By: “Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.” « More or Less Bunk

“Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.” « More or Less Bunk — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 12:59:39 +0000

[...] companies that once looked like the future are already tanking on Wall Street. Yet, as Historiann recently noted, successful, established universities are falling all over themselves to sign up with private [...]

By: Divide and conquer: MOOC edition. « More or Less Bunk

Divide and conquer: MOOC edition. « More or Less Bunk — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 06:04:01 +0000

[...] Princeton (via Tony Grafton in the comments at Historiann’s place): But when the university joined Coursera, it was administrators, not faculty, who picked the [...]

By: Canuck Down South

Canuck Down South — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 22:26:01 +0000

To clarify–by “interesting concession” I mean that it’s not something that a lot of the mainstream media reports on MOOCs are emphasizing, but this article does make (some) of the points that commenters on this thread are making–that online lectures maybe a supplement to some types of class material, at best–and at the most elite schools, they’re unlikely to be more than that. Too bad more reports on online ed don’t discuss the variety of schools out there.

By: Canuck Down South

Canuck Down South — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 22:21:43 +0000

This short article from Slate says pretty much what all the other articles say, except for one major thing–they admit at the end that Coursera courses are more like a replacement for a textbook than a replacement for a classroom–another supplement, not the whole course itself. It’s an interesting clarification to make–and one that the journalist can’t entirely avoid, as that seems to be what a lot of his (faculty) sources are telling him (it also mentions the UVa deal): http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2012/07/coursera_udacity_edx_will_free_online_ivy_league_courses_end_the_era_of_expensive_higher_ed_.html

By: Our colleagues, ourselves : Historiann : History and sexual politics, 1492 to the present

Wed, 18 Jul 2012 16:03:42 +0000

[...] room for improvement, right? We all need goals.) Tell me how you’d rate yourself. Also, per yesterday’s conversation, I missed Jonathan Rees’s two posts on the New York Times article on Coursera I linked to [...]

By: GayProf

GayProf — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 14:52:45 +0000

I have been surprised by how much enthusiasm that I have encountered among my colleagues for MOOCs. I am not a particular Luddite, but the notion that such things could replace actual face-to-face interactions between students and with professors is just beyond my imagination.

The Times articles also notes that this a “partnership” between private enterprise and universities which is not yet profitable. One can’t help but imagine that when it does start generating revenue the money will flow through that partnership in a lopsided manner.

By: Historiann

Historiann — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 14:39:28 +0000

Perpetua: nicely said. I remember attending a number of pointless meetings back in the late 1990s in which the agenda was 1) in PP on a screen, and 2) all of the slides were printed out in handouts for our convenience. Anyone with half a brain saw the pointlessness of this use of technology, not to mention the wasteful redundancy.

And jas: it’s too bad you didn’t seek out more challenging classes. I agree that your uni may have failed you, but I also think that it’s up to students to try to figure out how they want their own educations to go. I’m sure that if you wanted more challenges, you could have found them or made them.

(N.B.: I don’t disagree with your assessment that it was easy to skate through without too much work in some classes. This is why I require attendance, weekly short essays, and three formal essays in each upper-level 16-week, 3 credit course I teach. Teachers and professors must hold students accountable for the work we ask them to do, and that takes a great deal of effort on our part but IMHO it’s worth it.)

By: Perpetua

Perpetua — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 14:06:01 +0000

Oh, hey, I’d love to report that I just heard from colleagues that UVa announced its recent partnership with Coursera! I guess all that protesting by the faculty really worked.

All this reminds me of about a decade ago when everyone in higher ed starting pushing powerpoint, and every “teaching effectiveness” class emphasized its significance over and over and over again. And yet, has powerpoint radicalized knowledge? It has its uses, but it’s not some amazing wonder!learning!technology! AND the obsession with making it available to all students has led to the retrofitting of all classrooms with computers and projectors, at enormous cost to universities.

@jas – come sit on one of my classes, or one of Historiann’s. I guarantee you that failure to attend will not garner you an “A”. If some classes at universities are a “joke” it’s not because the bricks-and-morter university is a failure, and we shouldn’t respond to the existing problems with even more contempt for students.

By: Comradde PhysioProffe

Comradde PhysioProffe — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 13:54:10 +0000

I think Jonathon Booth outlines this “future” really accurately: lower quality (or no unis at all) for the hoi polloi who don’t have the background or connections to get into a prestigious private institution.

It is important to recognize that this is the intended–and not accidental–outcome for many elite policy makers.

By: Historiann

Historiann — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 12:17:17 +0000

koshembos: I would say that the humanists here who are standing up for F2F classes and who are skeptics of MOOCs and other online courses are in fact standing up for human-scaled education. We’re for what works, but as even one of the mooks pushing MOOCs has said (per the linked NYT story yesterday): “But even Mr. Thrun, a master of MOOCs, cautioned that for all their promise, the courses are still experimental. ‘I think we are rushing this a little bit,” he said. “I haven’t seen a single study showing that online learning is as good as other learning.’”

And as Tony Grafton points out, and as Jonathan Rees has repeatedly said, it’s not faculty who are pushing this. It’s administrators who (I’m just guessing here) are looking for a shiny! metal! object!-type program on which to stamp their names and then to move on to the next uni up the chain.