One piece of the educational model that should and does endure, despite MOOC efforts at its "disruption," is the instructor/student relationship. While the costs of employing living, breathing, high-quality mentors may be prohibitive, eliminating those instructors is disruptive to the learning process. Such effort to eliminate instructors has played out at universities, for example, San Jose State: http://tinyurl.com/lclgbyz
While MOOCs may offer a great repository of excellent information that can be widely disseminated, it is in essence a virtual library rather than a school.
Most of the experiments being conducted now in online education have been done, and we know their outcomes. (See Useractive founder, Scott Gray’s series of articles from 2010. The third post in the series is particularly illuminating: http://www.oreillyschool.com/2010/07/the-story-of-the-oreilly-school-of-technology-part-iii/)
According to Debra Woods, OST Executive Director, "One problem with MOOC’s having such a low completion rate is that they still haven’t changed the mode of instruction all that differently than the traditional face to face lecture model of instruction. They are still requiring students to complete the course by the time the professor is finished delivering the course. Once students fall behind, they begin to feel it is hopeless to continue and then they disengage.
A model where the instructor is more of a facilitator of learning and where students remain actively engaged in the material by interacting with mentors throughout the course would make a world of difference."
Space exists for the MOOC library to serve students in an educational environment, but so far this has not been the case. However, simply replacing the teacher with a video doesn't change education for the better.
Authored Comments
One piece of the educational model that should and does endure, despite MOOC efforts at its "disruption," is the instructor/student relationship. While the costs of employing living, breathing, high-quality mentors may be prohibitive, eliminating those instructors is disruptive to the learning process. Such effort to eliminate instructors has played out at universities, for example, San Jose State: http://tinyurl.com/lclgbyz
While MOOCs may offer a great repository of excellent information that can be widely disseminated, it is in essence a virtual library rather than a school.
Most of the experiments being conducted now in online education have been done, and we know their outcomes. (See Useractive founder, Scott Gray’s series of articles from 2010. The third post in the series is particularly illuminating: http://www.oreillyschool.com/2010/07/the-story-of-the-oreilly-school-of-technology-part-iii/)
According to Debra Woods, OST Executive Director, "One problem with MOOC’s having such a low completion rate is that they still haven’t changed the mode of instruction all that differently than the traditional face to face lecture model of instruction. They are still requiring students to complete the course by the time the professor is finished delivering the course. Once students fall behind, they begin to feel it is hopeless to continue and then they disengage.
A model where the instructor is more of a facilitator of learning and where students remain actively engaged in the material by interacting with mentors throughout the course would make a world of difference."
Space exists for the MOOC library to serve students in an educational environment, but so far this has not been the case. However, simply replacing the teacher with a video doesn't change education for the better.