I'm honestly not sure what Prof. Flower's view is here. I feel like I'm missing a lot of assumed history, context and perspective when I read this.
I've completed several courses through MITx, perhaps half a dozen total through edX and many more between edX, Coursera and Udacity.
The best content was an all around better experience than anything I've experienced in my time doing online programs as a adult student at an accredited university.
The best MOOC courses I've done are highly produced and thoughtful, particularly relative to the 'Read chapters 8,9,10 and submit these exercises directly from the painfully written $147 textbook.' accredited courses which I'm paying thousands each year for.
Relative to the state of the typical community college or state university online experience edX is revolutionary.
Opting for paid certificates of completion via MOOC wherever possible, I've spent the equivalent of perhaps 1.5 university credits and gained more than the 30 I've accrued over the past year.
MOOCs as a better and cheaper alternative to the current options for non-traditional students would seem like a great thing.
Obviously, there's one big issue, the gap between being educated (what you know) and having an education (what degree you hold).
Working in tech it's easy to forget that the field is pretty unique in valuing the former on par with if not completely in lieu of the latter. The rest of the world doesn't operate that way.
As long as MOOC courses are not accredited or otherwise valued by employers they aren't terribly useful to people who need education most.
> I'm honestly not sure what Prof. Flower's view is here ... The best MOOC courses I've done are highly produced and thoughtful
Keep in mind, this article is 2.5 years old. While there were some good MOOCs at that point, a lot of MITx material was just PDFs of syllabi, homework assignments, and lecture notes posted online.
And to this day, most MOOCs are just a one-to-one mapping of how the professors teach their live class. I think Flowers' view is that MITx had the funding and talent to completely re-think digital education, develop new tools, and raise the bar. They did not do that. What they did wasn't bad, but it wasn't transformative either.
>'I think Flowers' view is that MITx had the funding and talent to completely re-think digital education, develop new tools, and raise the bar. They did not do that. What they did wasn't bad, but it wasn't transformative either.'
I don't disagree with that.
I don't know if making that sort of criticism with the benefit of hindsight is entirely fair though?
I'm thinking that to 'completely re-think' anything is always going to be something of a gamble - with success depending not only on the merits of the solution but specific timing as well.
It's easy to imagine the people behind OCW and later MITx opting for a 'safe' approach as opposed to an all or nothing moonshot. Create measurable results in terms of courses online, visitors and students and iterate from there.
Also, holding up Khan Academy (2006) as what OCW could have or should have been is questionable considering what most of the web looked like 2001/02 when OCW launched. Those intervening years were a pretty big deal in web time.
> Obviously, there's one big issue, the gap between being educated (what you know) and having an education (what degree you hold).
> As long as MOOC courses are not accredited or otherwise valued by employers they aren't terribly useful to people who need education most.
If you watch Chris Dixon's Startup School talk, he talks about how MOOCs are meant to replace, only one of the functions a tradition College is responsible for.
I think Startups should formulate solutions (easier said than done though) to revolutionize other functions of a College as well, like: credentials, networking & collaboration with classmates, on-campus job placements.... while MOOCs could continue to be the Course Material for the education. Something like blended learning with flipped classrooms. This could potentially be a very powerful change in the Education System.
My favorite course so far has been MITx - 15.071x The Analytics Edge on edX. Everything I've seen from MITx has been above average. Andrew Ng's Machine Learning course on Coursera is quite nice as well.
I've completed several courses through MITx, perhaps half a dozen total through edX and many more between edX, Coursera and Udacity.
The best content was an all around better experience than anything I've experienced in my time doing online programs as a adult student at an accredited university.
The best MOOC courses I've done are highly produced and thoughtful, particularly relative to the 'Read chapters 8,9,10 and submit these exercises directly from the painfully written $147 textbook.' accredited courses which I'm paying thousands each year for.
Relative to the state of the typical community college or state university online experience edX is revolutionary.
Opting for paid certificates of completion via MOOC wherever possible, I've spent the equivalent of perhaps 1.5 university credits and gained more than the 30 I've accrued over the past year.
MOOCs as a better and cheaper alternative to the current options for non-traditional students would seem like a great thing.
Obviously, there's one big issue, the gap between being educated (what you know) and having an education (what degree you hold).
Working in tech it's easy to forget that the field is pretty unique in valuing the former on par with if not completely in lieu of the latter. The rest of the world doesn't operate that way.
As long as MOOC courses are not accredited or otherwise valued by employers they aren't terribly useful to people who need education most.