Posted by in MOOCs
and tagged with Coursera, Thomas Friedman
In today’s New York Times, Thomas Friedman writes:
I can see a day soon where you’ll create your own college degree by taking the best online courses from the best professors from around the world.
The column, which seems to be more PR for Coursera than legitimate commentary on education, comes a day before a group of us professors will be attempting to explore the MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) that Friedman sees as the savior of higher education–by actually taking a MOOC ourselves, Coursera’s “E-learning and Digital Cultures.” As experienced educators, we want to learn about MOOCs, seeing if they do, indeed, offer something that can improve the education we are offering.
And they might. They will not, however, do what Friedman imagines. How do we know? Because the ideas behind the MOOC are not new. Go back 100 years in America (go back to Ben Franklin, actually), and you will see similar enthusiasm for structures to help the auto-didact. What happened to them? They proved not to provide either the education or the credentialing demanded by American society and institutions–even business institutions. Alone, the MOOCs will not provide this to the broader world, and for the same reasons.
http://bit.ly/11dFlLl