Jonathan Rees has a brilliant postmortem of the MOOC phenomenon and its rapid, silent demise over the past few years. He writes: MOOCs are dead. “How can I possibly argue that MOOCs are dead?,” you may ask. After all, to borrow the stats just from Coursera, they have: 1600 courses, 130+ specializations, 145+ university partners, … Continue reading We called it: MOOCs are dead as uni disruptors, but follow the money
Well done! You can discuss Jonathan’s comments here or over at his place, which is where I found the video.
The usually techno-utopian Joshua Kim is channeling our pal, MOOC skeptic Jonathan Rees! It’s almost unbloglich! (I’ve jumped on Kim before and was kind of a jerk, but he was a thoroughly decent guy about it all, contacting me in a personal email.) In a post published yesterday at Inside Higher Ed, Kim reports that he was … Continue reading MOOCs vs. House of Cards smackdown
And guess how I learned this? Through the Twitter machine, when I saw Jonathan Rees tweet a link to his contribution, “The Taylorization of the Historians’ Workplace.” (Regular readers will recall that Jonathan put together a panel on “How Should Historians Respond to MOOCs” at 2014 annual conference of the American Historical Association in Washington, … Continue reading Mooks talking MOOCs: Our AHA MOOC panel comments are now online at Perspectives
I assume you’re all familiar with Sebastian Thrum’s “ooopsie–my bad” last week on the argument that MOOCs can educate the uneducated masses and at the same time make money for his deluded investors. I haven’t had the time or energy to say “I told you so,” especially because Jonathan Rees has a nice round-up (with a … Continue reading MOOC meltdown!
Except maybe. . . profit!??!?! Here’s a university administrator who apparently sees through the smoke, mirrors, and Thomas Friedmanesque rainbows-and-unicorns technofluff of the Lords of MOOC Creation, Vice-Chancellor Harlene Hayne of the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zeland (h/t to regular commenter truffula. Maybe it takes an ocean of winds and a position outside … Continue reading “A MOOC is only about inputs, not about outputs.”
Go read Michael Lind on the inevitable fallibility of our modern political and media elites. I think there’s something in there that speaks to the pump-and-dump cycle we’re seeing now with MOOCs: The politicians and pundits who get the most attention — at least for a while — are those who treat a genuine but … Continue reading Another reason to question the Lords of MOOC Creation
Does this read like a Coursera or Udacity press realease to you, too? Whether for good or ill, MOOCs augur a disruption of the relationships among students, colleges and trade schools, and the credentials those schools offer — a relationship that has stabilized higher education for at least a century. Yet if done right — … Continue reading Historiann stumbles out of the wilderness to find the Lords of MOOC creation have successfully placed an advertorial in the Washington Post
Daniel Luzer on Jeffrey J. Selingo’s College (Un)bound: The Future of Higher Education and What it Means for Students, in a review entitled “Revolution for Thee, Not Me:” [I]f we’re expanding access to college through alternative, technology-based systems, is this really expanding access to college or providing a different experience entirely? Perhaps the biggest flaw … Continue reading When you see Count MOOCbot, scream and run away!
Howdy, friends–Historiann here. I’m knee deep in research papers and final exams and have no time for posting, so thank goodness someone out there is writing for the non-peer reviewed world wide timewasting web. Today’s guest post is by two senior history professors who attended last week’s Annual Meeting of the American Council of Learned … Continue reading Guest post on the Lords of MOOC Creation: who’s really for change, and who in fact is standing athwart history yelling STOP?
Historiann 