Tag Archives: MOOCs

Biting off more than we can chew

As Aaron has noted, he and a group of other professors will be taking and writing about Coursera’s “E-learning and Digital Cultures MOOC.” I will not be one of them – not because I wouldn’t find it interesting, but because I’ve already been down the road, having taken a World History Course last semester (and […] … learn more→

Learning from MOOCs

Educators create online courses for the same reasons that they became teachers to begin with: to educate students, broaden their awareness of the world and thereby improve the students’ lives. And with massive open online courses (MOOCs), educators can now reach many more students at a time. But MOOCs offer many other benefits to the […] … learn more→

MOOCS, online learning, and the wrong conversation

The fact that MOOCS and online courses have sparked new conversations on your campus about teaching and learning is a terrific development. We should be grateful whenever attention is paid to teaching. The problem is that neither MOOCS or online courses are, in themselves, a strategy to meet the challenges we all face in higher […] … learn more→

Best of 2012: Are MOOCs a game-changer for higher education?

Possibly, but not as you might expect It is almost obligatory to kick off Treeofknowledgeany article about online learning with some fairly wild statements about the disruptive impact of massive open online courses – MOOCs – on higher education. Attempting to avoid this pitfall, we shall make a case for MOOCs as contributor to the […] … learn more→

The MOOCs fad and bubble: please tell us another story!

How can we escape this new buzz about MOOCs, since the launch of Coursera? Is there anything else than the bubble effect created by the media that is part of the strategy itself? This is how our financial economy works, nowadays, this ‘opinion economy’ as André Orléan labels it, where opinion and reputation are the […] … learn more→

An insider\’s guide: what it\’s really like to study a MOOC

Anyone who has been paying attention to higher education this year will have heard of the MOOC – courses from prestigious universities offered for free online. There’s been great interest in them from academics and students alike. And the major players are already establishing themselves and their place in the market – edX, Udacity and […] … learn more→

A people’s history of MOOCs

Massive, open to all, a democratic space that offers people from all walks of life exposure to the greatest thinkers of our time, and while we’re at it, a fabulous branding opportunity – welcome to the nineteenth century municipal public library. When Boston built its majestic public library in 1895, a grand new home for […] … learn more→

To MOOC or not to MOOC?

It seems at present that nearly every American college and university is wrestling with the question of whether to offer MOOCs (massive open online courses). There is something irresistibly seductive about the idea of simultaneously reaching thousands of students everywhere in the world, effectively seating them in an infinite virtual lecture hall. Indeed, the idea […] … learn more→

Making the most of MOOCs

Let’s begin with an old story about using technology to innovate in the classroom. In the 1990s, when the Internet was coming into its own, Professor Antonio Gonzalez at Wesleyan University found an early way to utilize this technology to enhance his class. He recited and recorded a poem, by early 20th century poet Antonio […] … learn more→

MOOCs, the dip, and performance funding

Two of the major trends in higher education are on a collision course with each other. But their respective partisans don’t seem to notice. On one side, MOOCs are gaining steam at an amazing rate. They started as non-credit distance extensions by elite universities; now, the Gates Foundation is funding attempts to develop MOOCs for […] … learn more→