> 2. How much does it cost to record a class, create a couple of self-grading exercises, reuse old powerpoints and PDFS, and then throw the whole bundle up online
From the article, "We have spent about $40 million over 10 years."
(I removed the part where I got confused by MITx and MITx.org, thanks keithwinstein for clearing that up!)
The $40M quote is actually related to OCW, not MOOCs directly. You could probably argue that MOOCs are, in part, a reaction to the limited impact of OCW.
(Jumpstarting discussions about broadening education, yes, but the actual impact of which was mostly releasing a bunch of course notes--no. Probably not surprising in retrospect. Was it really realistic to expect that teachers in Africa would take all this and create courses for their students?)
I suspect we're well on our way to some sort of crash of this first wave of MOOCs as well. Whether something substantial comes out of it other than a gradual petering out caused by the lack of meaningful returns and results remains to be seen.
Both of you seem to have gotten confused by mitx.org, the "Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange."
That site is not related to MITx, the MIT MOOC offering. MITx was essentially renamed edX (after MIT partnered with Harvard) and is here: https://www.edx.org/
From the article, "We have spent about $40 million over 10 years."
(I removed the part where I got confused by MITx and MITx.org, thanks keithwinstein for clearing that up!)