In the presence of MOOC mania, there are those who may speculate that the era of the residential college and university is on the wane. Massive open online courses (like Coursera, co-founded by two Stanford computer scientists which now has about 300,000 people around the world taking courses taught by leading elite university professors, and EdX, MIT and Harvard’s cyber baby founded less than a year ago, which already has approximately 155,000 students) are leading the cutting edge of educational delivery. Imagine: a shopkeeper in Mumbai, a housewife in South Dakota, and an aspiring professional in Cairo can be classmates. Physically handicapped learners have the same access as anyone else. Professors teaching one course can get more comments and feedback than they might have otherwise gotten in an entire career– from keyboards all over the world, While MOOC developers work out the snarly details of how to devise a credentials system which is fraud-proof, we stand in awe at the achievement of a notion which was just a dream a decade ago: Global education of the first order, available to anyone with a keyboard and capacity to learn. In our next blog, IESolutions will posit ten reasons to attend an actual residential college or university, instead of earning credentials from the comfort of your own home, MOOC-style.
Sarah C. Reese, Informed Educational Solutions, sarah@myiesolutions.com
Related articles
- Coursera forced to call off a MOOC amid complaints about the course (insidehighered.com)
- 5 Education Providers Offering MOOCs Now Or In The Future, Education Dive (July 2012)
- Ten Reasons To Attend a College (Instead of learning online via a MOOC!) (myiesolutions.wordpress.com)
- Final Thoughts on MOOCs from IESolutions (myiesolutions.wordpress.com)
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