Thursday, July 17, 2014
"When one professor can teach 50,000 people it alters the economics of education" - Andrew Ng, Stanford University
Recently, I came across one of the most exciting articles I have read to date about the impact of technology on education. It dealt with MOOCS and a few professors from Stanford who helped get the ball rolling. Their motive? To make quality education available FOC to all interested parties with Internet access.
The number of responses to MOOCS has been staggering. Granted, there is a very high attrition rate. In one case cited in the article, 160,000 people from 197 countries signed up for an online course offering on artificial intelligence but only 23,000 completed it…..Only 23,000?!! That is amazing!!!
The article entitled "Campus 2.0" is only about three pages long and full of information that contributed to my excitement regarding the future of education and learning and has renewed my belief in the altruism of my fellow human beings. Perhaps there will be financial reward somewhere down the road for them but, for the present, these individuals have dedicated their time, energy and heart to researching, designing and providing quality online educational opportunities to thousands for free.
If you’re interested just enter "Campus 2.0" in Google Scholar. It appears in the March 13, 2013 edition of Nature, the International Weekly Journal of Science and is written by M. Mitchell Waldrup.
I tried linking it several times to this blog post for convenience and although it appears in "edit/draft" mode every time, as soon as I hit the "publish" button, it vanishes. Poof!!
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I worry that the one professor teaching 50,000 means a few hundred others are out of a job, particularly with the bottom-line approach that higher ed is taking.
ReplyDeleteThe thing about MOOCs is that they're typically free (I don't know of one that people have had to pay for), which a huge part of their appeal. I think the people doing it already have the funds and the initiative to put such a course in place. I think the people enrolling in these courses see an opportunity that they otherwise might not have had, but with less conviction than if they had paid (hence the high rate of attrition). I'm no expert, but I would tend to disagree with the idea that MOOCs are affecting the availability of teaching jobs.
DeleteI believe MOOCs could be classified as self paced instruction. Any assessment would be multiple choice or true false questions. I don't think these courses are part of the faculty member's official course load, so unless the person is facilitating a MOOC course for research or scholarly activity, that person will not spend much instructional time with MOOC students.
ReplyDeleteAt present one of the big differences between what MOOCs offer and what paid, online university courses offer is accreditation. The article mentions that the proponents of MOOCS are already working with various accreditation agencies to secure accreditation.
ReplyDeleteSeveral of the top universities like MIT and Stanford are really pushing to create and offer MOOCS because as the world population grows, brick-and-mortar universities cannot keep up with demands for higher education.
There will always be a need for professors and instructors to guide student learning. The difference will be that education will no longer be confined to just those who can afford it or who are willing to go into debt to secure it but will be available for all who want it.