Can Apple kill passwords?

 by Lulu Hoeller

I hate passwords! I have dozens of them and if it wasn't for my devices automatically remembering them I'd be locked out of everything. I've tried to follow the standard advice of sticking to a certain formula but then there are several services that insist I change password every month and will not accept any old ones. The worst ones are services I only use now and then, like 2-3 times a year. I nearly always have to ask for a new password. Worst case scenario is when I can't remember my user name either. I know there are alternatives including apps that remember everything for you but I still haven't got round to them. Other technical solutions so far have had too many ifs and buts to threaten the dominance of the password.

My hopes have been raised however by Apple's move to include fingerprint ID detection in the new iPhone as described in a BBC article, Could iPhone's fingerprint sensor help kill off passwords? Biometrics has been toted for at least 15 years now but have never really found the killer application. Inclusion in the iPhone could well lead to mainstream acceptance. It's not foolproof, nothing is, but the article suggests that future ID authentication will involve multiple checks on say fingerprint, iris, voice and even pulse. The future may well build upon your body as your ID and not a combination of symbols.

The impact of more secure identification control on education is clear. An often discussed weakness in online assessment and examination is ID control and the use of biometrics with mobile devices could clear up many of these concerns. For now, however, we still have to remember those irritating passwords.

Rockstar keynotes

 by Anirudh Koul

One of the most prolific keynote speakers at educational conferences in recent years has been George Siemens of Athabasca University in Canada. As the founder of connectivism and one of the pioneers of the MOOC movement his research and practical experience in the pedagogical use of educational technology has made him one of the most sought-after keynote speakers on the international circuit. His air miles total for the past 5 years must be mighty impressive.

In a new blog post however he has announced his retiral from the conference limelight, Done doing keynotes. He understandably wants to return to teaching and research and contribute to the educational discussions from that perspective rather than from the spotlight of the conference stage. An excellent example of knowing when to step back.

One paragraph in the post caught my eye in particular. Keynote speakers in education are gaining rockstar status and that creates an uncomfortable tension.

"I’ve long held that once something becomes routine, rather than innovative and challenging, that it is time to rethink what I’m doing. Additionally, there has been growing creep of “rockstar-ism” in education where we look for “the person” to give us “the solution”. I’ve always been uncomfortable with the view that the answer can be brought to us by someone outside of our system. This view is appealing but completely false. I’ve answered many questions from audience members with “I don’t know” and “that depends”. People seem to find this unsatisfying. We like our so-called rock stars in the education and technology field. We like clear answers. And it’s not healthy for us or for our field."

Of course the role of a keynote speaker is to challenge, inspire and create a buzz in the conference hall that will then permeate the rest of the sessions. However there is the risk that Siemens states that we expect them to have all the answers. I experienced this first hand in the summer when I attended the EDEN (European Distance and E.-learning Network) conference in Oslo. Two of the most prominent keynotes in the business, Sir Ken Robinson and Sugata Mitra, were appearing (Robinson via videolink from Los Angeles) and the buzz in the hall before the performance really felt like a rock concert. They are both inspirational and polished performers who challenge many fundamental beliefs about education and are naturally excellent at getting a conference off to a flying start. However I got a strong sense of the rockstar-ism that Siemens mentions in his post as we all laughed at the jokes and enjoyed the keynote ride as we would if our musical heroes were performing their greatest hits. No disrespect to the speakers, it's more our own need for figureheads and gurus who can provide the answers we seek.

The answers are within us rather than on the conference stage.

The silent majority - why are MOOC forums counterproductive?

 by James Cridland

The discussion forum is a central feature of all learning management systems and the focus for most online courses. Often it's the only interactive feature in the course but it's notoriously difficult to generate real discussion there. Too few participants and it will probably never take off. Too many and it becomes chaotic. In many cases students only post in the forum because there are credits at stake and very often the real discussion takes place elsewhere; on Facebook or Google Hangouts for example.

So if the forums of regular online courses are difficult to run effectively they will prove almost impossible in a MOOC with potentially tens of thousands of participants. Nonetheless most MOOCs persist with them as a token attempt at interaction or because the forum is somehow a default setting in online learning. Generally MOOC forums become overwhelming and chaotic with hundreds of unrelated threads and the vast majority of participants take one look and never return. An article in Campus Technology, Building a Sense of Community in MOOCs, reinforces this impression that forums are actually counter-productive:

"Ironically, the biggest obstacle preventing MOOC students from forming relationships is the feature most relied on to encourage them."

A dynamic forum is like gathering people in a room and asking them to discuss. A class of say 30 will divide into smaller groups and it is easy to move over to a new group when you want to. There's a clear structure to the interactions and it's easy to get an overview. However if you add a few thousand strangers into the mix it gets completely chaotic and effective communication is likely to break down. Some forums are dominated by so-called super posters, students who can be responsible for up to 25% of a forums total posts (see report on a recent Stanford University survey in eCampus News Sept 2013 p6). Their enthusiasm might inspire a few but will intimidate less confident participants. The same survey shows that only one in ten students posted more than once in MOOC forums and the vast majority wrote absolutely nothing. A major factor to the inactivity is that most people are simply not used to online discussion and see learning as an information transfer from teacher to student. Media literacy is a clear issue here.

Another problem I have noticed in MOOC forums is the presence of expert participants. Many teachers and researchers are taking MOOCs out of curiosity and as a way to expand their professional networks. Very valid reasons and I am guilty as charged. However the danger of having over-qualified participants is that their contributions to the discussions can set an impossibly high standard that can intimidate the new learners. There are also MOOCs which are also regular for-credit courses mixing full-time campus students with thousands of MOOCers. The regular students will inevitably set the tone of the discussion. Maybe these two groups should somehow be kept apart since they have such widely different motives for participating. They can inspire and motivate each other but I suspect they can also intimidate, irritate and confuse. I'd be very interested in reading any research on this issue.

So if a massive anarchic forum is not the way to encourage meaningful discussion in a MOOC, what is? The Campus Technology article lists a number of examples. One way is to encourage small-scale groups using whatever networking tool is most appropriate for the participants, such as a Facebook group. Basically break up the massive crowd into friendly neighbourhoods. Another way is to create focused interactions such as a question and answer session with a tutor where the structure is clear and within a given time frame.

"So instead of trying to force a free-flowing conversation in the live session, Greene and her colleagues took advantage of students' eagerness to pose questions in the forums. "The second week, we ran a question-and-answer session with topics we had prepared," she explains, "formed by what was coming up on the [forum] thread." The blend helped students feel like participants in the live session without being pressured to interact with the experts on the spot."

Interestingly many MOOCs are using synchronous online meetings as an effective discussion area where a teacher meets with a limited number of students to deal with questions using for example Google Hangouts. These are also situations that most participants will feel comfortable with reflecting traditional classroom practice that all are familiar with.

There is of course no patented answer to this problem but maybe we should think at least twice before launching a MOOC with a common discussion forum in the middle. Maybe that's the one element we should drop.

MOOC limitations

 by Intrepidteacher

We often hear claims that MOOCs will make top class higher education available to the whole world and that they will democratize higher education. This is true to some extent but a new article on E-learning Africa puts these ambitious claims into perspective: The underlying inequality of MOOCs. For many learners in the world the MOOCs are still inaccessible due to lack of infrastructure. Although there are numerous educational technology initiatives in developing countries the reality for most is that access to online learning is still a dream.

"There are a variety of mitigating factors that limit access to MOOCs, many of which are the same as those that also exclude disadvantaged groups from traditional educational models and stem from financial, geographical and educational disparity. In practical terms, sustained participation in a MOOC requires a set of resources and infrastructure that is a privilege, as many of us ... often forget. A reliable electricity supply, frequent and uninterrupted access to a device capable of going online and playing video and sound, and a secure, unrestricted Internet connection are essential starting blocks – as is a safe and comfortable space in which to learn."

Then there is the simple lack of time to study with long working days, family duties and chores that we in developed countries take for granted but that can take much longer to do in less developed countries. When you have to work 12 hours a day to keep going when do you have time to study? Our increasing interest in informal learning depends on us having significant leisure time to pursue such activities.

In addition to this is the fact that online learning requires advanced study skills, digital literacy and a high level of self-discipline that most people lack, even in affluent countries. The key to levelling the educational playing field is teaching people how to learn.

"A “basic level of education and the ability to study” spans everything from essential literacy and numeracy to self-motivation, being able to pursue independent research and practice of writing academic papers. Learners without these skills, let alone the foundation knowledge required to follow a university level course, will no doubt struggle to remain engaged."

Until these elements are in place the promise of open online learning (whatever acronym it goes under) will remain elusive for the vast majority. We have still a lot of work to do.

What do employers want from graduates?

CC BY-NC-ND Some rights reserved by Nuwandalice

How important are qualifications in today's labour market? According to an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Giving Employers What They Don't Really Want, there's a mismatch between what educators believe and the answers given by industry representatives. Not surprisingly educators believe that employers look first at academic credentials whereas the employers clearly state that they're looking more at relevant skills, practical experience and personality. These are the findings of a new study from the Association of American Colleges and Universitie: It Takes More than a Major: Employer Priorities for College Learning and Student Success. The employers questioned in the survey are looking for applicants who are innovative and analytic with high levels of critical thinking, problem-solving and communication skills. Furthermore they were positive to graduates with a broad range of knowledge and skills; a 21st century liberal education. Despite strong rumours to the contrary the generalist graduate is clearly not dead.

So employers are looking for evidence of your practical skills, preferably combining academic studies with hands-on workplace projects. Your collection of diplomas and certificates are of much less value than proven track record in concrete workplace projects and soft skills. This is nothing new of course and it's not always the candidate with the impressive certificates that gets the job - it's usually the one who shows the right communication skills in the interview and can offer the most relevant experience. An article in the Huffington Post, Why You Shouldn't Have 'Education' at the Top of Your Resume, confirms this trend that relevant skills and practical experience should come at the top of any resume.

"If you begin your resume with 'Education,' you sacrifice coveted space to, frankly, the least interesting part of your bio. Then, the employer looks up from your piece of paper and says, "OK, so what do you know how to do?"
We are entrenched in a skills-based economy, and what really counts are your abilities. It doesn't matter if you learned them at college, an internship, a full-time job or while babysitting your neighbor's kids.
Skills. Skills. Skills."

A degree is of course still important but what gets you employed is being able to show what you can do with it all. This is where the adoption of skills based badges, like the current Open Badges initiative, could well be a major breakthrough. Badges can be awarded for practical skills and workplace experience and provide credible credentials for informal learning. This can provide a complement to formal certification. Your degree shows a certain level of academic ability whereas your badge collection provides an employer with credible evidence of more practical skills.

Just over the next hill ... is a new hill

 by lovingyourwork.com

We live in an age of reorganisation, makeovers, re-engineering and reinvention. Just over the next hill, after this reorganisation, when we've implemented the new quality assurance system ... we will find the promised land where everything works and everyone knows exactly their role. From a personal to a societal level we are constantly chasing our own tails in the hope that we can finally make it to Nirvana. There's a constant stream of books, courses, models and systems that can help us change and a thriving industry in inspirational lectures and conferences. We all naturally want to succeed but maybe we need to realise that we will never reach that ultimate perfection. Basically life is work in progress and we never really get beyond a beta version (though it may be an exceptionally good version), at least this time round.

This is nicely illustrated in a post by David Truss, Perpetual beta, on the subject of teaching where examples of best practice are held up as ideals. He finds this concept rather misleading because it suggests that there is an answer rather than best practice being the best available right now for a particular group in a particular situation. Your best practice may not work for me and vice versa. Again it's work in progress and practice is constantly being refined and tweaked. Truss sums this up as best practice is still just practice.

" ... we shouldn’t necessarily be talking about best practice. More practice can always help us improve on the best way(s) that we currently know of. So, in effect, the current ‘best’ usually isn’t the future best practice. This leads us to being in perpetual beta, experimenting and doing things differently."

Of course we learn from others and we can gain inspiration from good examples but maybe the adjective best is the illusion. Best can always be better.

You've seen the film, now do the MOOC!

CC BY-NC Some rights reserved by Sara Roegiers

Could MOOCs develop into an interesting media spin-off? Today it's not enough to write a book or make a film, you need to add the interactive game, the soundtrack album, tee-shirts, toys and all other merchandising. So why not add on a MOOC to the package allowing you to investigate the subject matter in more detail? The MOOC could offer a pathway for people to move from enjoying a good film/book to really investigating the issues behind it. Combine the game with the MOOC and a whole new educational genre awaits us.

This seems to be a bit of the thinking behind a new MOOC featured in an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Sabato’s Kennedy MOOC Has a Companion Book and a TV Special. A new Coursera course offered by the University of Virginia, The Kennedy half century, looks like attracting considerable global interest. Professor Larry J. Sabato who will teach the course about the political career of President John F Kennedy is tying the new MOOC to his recently published book on the subject, The Kennedy Half Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy, as well as a new TV documentary. There is of course a hint of self promotion here but by tying the different media channels together you get a compelling package. Have a look at the course trailer film below.

However it isn't this particular example that interests me. The idea is that an open online course could become a common add-on to films and books allowing people whose interest has been aroused to gain a deeper insight into the issues raised. Historical films, biographies, films from literature and so on could come with a follow-up MOOC to study what really happened, read more of the author's works, investigate a political career etc. The courses could range from academic studies to pure general interest. Why not MOOCs for kids linked up with popular films? It's a long way from Harvard but if it encourages more people to be curious and study more then I'm in favour.

Fly-on-the-wall lecture capture doesn't work

 by evesdropping

A lot has been written about the power of MOOCs to democratize education, making courses from the world's elite universities available to all at the click of a mouse. This is true to a certain extent since the key players in the mass-MOOC market are the likes of Harvard, MIT and Stanford but the problem is that the rest of the world is still on the outside looking in. True we can now gain an insight into how courses are taught at the top universities but only by pressing our faces against the shop window. The real courses are still elite and exclusive and we certainly don't get any credentials from these institutions for completing their online courses.

An article in Mindshift, Is Online Education Widening the Digital Divide? sees these MOOCs as leading to a wider division between the elite and the rest rather than the reverse. The article takes the case of teachers at San Jose State University who were asked to use material from a Harvard MOOC with their students and refused. The problem was that the course material consisted of recorded lectures and interaction between the teacher and the Harvard class. This type of fly-on-the-wall lecture filming is of course simple and cheap to produce but it reinforces the feeling of exclusion for the online student. The teacher addresses a visible audience of elite students and not the wider online audience. The online students are looking through a window at the elite students and their teacher rather than directly being involved.

According to Peter Hadreas, professor and Philosophy Department Chair at San Jose State University:

“We have a very diverse student body and we’re very proud of that,” Hadreas said. “But they would watch Michael Sandel teach Harvard students and he would interpolate into his talks and dialogues how privileged they were. And they were for the most part, certainly to a greater extent, white than our student body. So we’ve got, on the one hand, this strange sort of upstairs/downstairs situation where the lower-class people could look at how the upper-class people were being educated. We thought that was just flat out insulting, in a way, to the students and certainly not pedagogically reinforcing.”

The classroom session works well just there in the room but loses all its impact when filmed because the classroom interaction is missing for the online audience. Many universities are moving away from classroom lecture capture, replacing one hour lectures with a series of short lecture segments recorded direct in front of the camera so that the teacher is speaking to the online learner without classroom students in front of them. That eye contact can make a lot of difference and create the feeling that the teacher is addressing me.

What works in the classroom does not usually work online. Filming a classroom session is only useful to that class as a record of their work and as revision material. Don't show it to online students.

Too much cake

  by Omar Chatriwala

I wrote recently about self-service learning and how MOOCs offer a convenient complement to formal education. The analogy of the self-service cafeteria where learners can compose their own blend of short courses is very attractive and I believe that we are seeing the emergence of a much more varied and flexible ecosystem for learning combining the benefits of short, just-in-time online courses with longer formal courses and programmes. You choose the option that best fits your current lifestyle and needs.

However there is a danger of letting everyone compose their own education by piecing together dishes from a gigantic buffet. What happens if you only choose the cakes and miss out the vegetables? This is the theme of an article in the Washington Post by Robert F Bruner: Commentary: Without structure, learning crumbles. He's worried that the new educational buffet will mean that people will only learn what they want to learn and thus will miss the less attractive but essential details that put everything into context. It's a bit like the problem of personalization on the web. If we can tweak our preferences so that we are only exposed to news and information that we agree with we will simply live in a bubble, unaware of other points of view or sheltered from unpleasant information. Our own preferences are not enough. Someone has to ensure that we have a balanced diet.

"Too much dessert and not enough broccoli. Students who simply follow their appetites will eventually find some educational candy: courses that may gratify an immediate interest, but don’t really build one’s capabilities. Like a healthy diet, a great education consists of a balance of intellectual nutrition. Eat your vegetables. They are good for you."

How do we make sure students "eat their greens" as well as benefitting from the flexibility and diversity of today's learning environment?

Copyright Bermuda Triangle

 by Dave Stokes

The book shops of the world are crammed with titles and more books are published today than ever before. However once a book has been available for a few years it disappears from the shelves and unless the publishers think it worth a new edition it will become extremely difficult to read the book unless your local library happens to have a copy. This is one major problem with current copyright law. Popular titles will of course be republished regularly but the vast majority will not be worth a publisher producing a new edition and as a result they will become unavailable outside a few libraries or second-hand bookstores. Millions of books are lost until the copyright period expires.

This problem is well illustrated by recent research summed up in an article by Rebecca J Rosen in The Atlantic, The Hole in Our Collective Memory: How Copyright Made Mid-Century Books Vanish.

"A book published during the presidency of Chester A. Arthur has a greater chance of being in print today than one published during the time of Reagan."

The article examines research by Paul J. Heald at the University of Illinois who has analysed all books available on Amazon to see how different decades in the last 150 years are represented. The copyright Bermuda Triangle is clear in the statistics presented. Books available from the 1850's are double the number of titles from the 1950's. Basically you can buy and access millions of currently published titles plus just about everything pre-1923 but very little in between. So millions of books are hidden away because they're not worth republishing and copyright prevents them from being published digitally. Heald sums up the situation:

"Copyright correlates significantly with the disappearance of works rather than with their availability ... Shortly after works are created and proprietized, they tend to disappear from public view only to reappear in significantly increased numbers when they fall into the public domain and lose their owners."

Since no-one is going to make any money from selling this vast resource why not let them be available as simple e-books for free? At least they will be available and read by some. Maybe they could be sold for micro-payments, a bit like the music service Spotify, where subscribers pay a low monthly fee and can read whatever they want. That way the authors could at least earn a little from their title instead of zero if it is out of publication as at present. I'm not suggesting that we do this for best-sellers but for the millions of forgotten books that are now languishing in the Bermuda Triangle of copyright.

Drowning in freedom

 by Intersection Consulting

Today there is a vast range of free open courses and communities where you can learn just about anything; if you know how to take advantage of them. Although MOOCs and open learning offer new paths to learning for people who otherwise have no access to higher education there is still a high threshold for participation. You need a high level of digital literacy to find the courses, sign up and especially to participate. You need to be a proficient self-learner with high motivation and confidence in your ability to succeed. You need to be open to new methods and have a wide range of learning strategies. It's not surprising then that most MOOC participants already have a degree and are at home on the net. Even if we feel overwhelmed by the MOOC hype, out there in the "real" world few people have ever heard the term.

An excellent article by Keith Brennan in Hybrid Pedagogy examines how connectivism and MOOCs fail to support inexperienced learners and those with low self-esteem in education: In Connectivism, No One Can Hear You Scream: a Guide to Understanding the MOOC Novice. He identifies key factors for student success: self efficacy, cognitive load and prior knowledge. Self efficacy is the belief that you will succeed and this is essential in courses like MOOCs which lack the scaffolding and encouragement of more traditional courses. This belief is also essential for dealing successfully with the cognitive load, the volume of new information and assumed skills, the you are faced with in many online courses. Many MOOCs and connectivist courses assume a high level of prior knowledge, in particular when it comes to using social media and digital tools. If you lack these skills you will find such courses bewildering and there is a high probability that you will give up.

Inexperienced learners need lots of encouragement, feedback, guidance and quick support responses and these are generally missing in MOOCs (both c and x varieties). Of course there is plenty of peer support but I can imagine that even contributing to discussion forums  can be daunting for inexperienced learners. Seeing peers succeed can be a motivating factor if you already have a positive attitude to your own ability but if not the sight of others succeeding where you feel confused can have a demotivating effect. Brennan gives a list of demotivating factors:

• Watching others succeed while you don't
• Too much information delivered in a chaotic environment (Twitter hashtags, blog feeds, RSS, discussion forums etc)
• Decentralisation of the learning process (too much choice, "drowning in freedom")
• Complex tasks with little or no guidance

All this can be stimulating for some but not everyone is comfortable with this level of freedom.

"Not everyone knows how to be a node. Not everyone is comfortable with the type of chaos Connectivism asserts. Not everyone is a part of the network. Not everyone is a self-directed learner with advanced metacognition. Not everyone is already sufficiently an expert to thrive in a free-form environment. Not everyone thinks well enough of their ability to thrive in an environment where you need to think well of your ability to thrive."

Courses need to have clear pre-course information of what skills you need to participate fully (maybe linking to pre-course training or courses that will teach you these skills) and a clear description of the kind of teaching and learning that the course will employ. The new learners that so many MOOCs claim to be aiming at need help to get on board and more help to keep them there. Self-service is great if you know what you want but confusing if you're used to being served.

"MOOCs are littered with the drowned, who want to participate, but see their sense of possibility get sucked under by an experience designed to, in part, ensure they sink."

The MOOC debate reaches calmer waters

 by lanier67

“I don’t see the MOOC that I teach as a threat to traditional universities or to the discipline, rather just the opposite. It’s the sort of thing a public university should be doing: broadcasting its knowledge.”

This quote from Dr. Matt McGarrity of the University of Washington in an article on e-Learning Industry, University of Washington instructor dives into MOOC spotlight, sums up what I believe is the essence of the MOOC movement. Most universities are funded by public money, at least to some extent, and all have policies for outreach activities and involvement with the society they serve. Allowing the world access to the course material they use is part of this outreach and a way of showing the taxpayers what they're paying for. As I've written many times I don't think that MOOCs are so much a threat to education as an extremely welcome complement, offering new groups of students access to new paths for learning. These courses can have varying degrees of pedagogical innovation, some will work and others will flop, but they will make higher education more accessible than ever before, whether or not any credits are available from them.

Another quote in this interview with McGarrity that I liked was this one about the MOOC dropout rate:

"To some degree, so much of the talk about dropout rate misinterprets the initial enrollment figure, right? The threshold one must cross to sign up for the course is a button click. So they’re talking about the button click, which may not be a genuine enrollment. It’s like Facebook accounts—maybe there are so many million, but a lot of them are empty. So, the question is of those enrollments, is active students from Week 1 to Week 10. That’s probably a better way to look at it."

We should be looking at how many students completed the course and focus on that rather than those who "dropped out". Many of the dropouts probably never even dropped in: they simple clicked on the enroll button and forgot about it. If 1,000 people complete the course that's pretty impressive and what happened to the other 4,000 is probably not so relevant. It certainly can't be compared with dropping out of a campus course that has cost you a lot of money and is a major life commitment - something has to be seriously wrong to drop out of a 4-year degree program.

It's good to read more and more realistic and thoughtful views on the whole MOOC movement. Maybe we're moving out of the initial hype phase.

MOOCs for credit - few takers so far

 by Ian Wilson

When MOOCs first appeared there were many who criticized them for not offering university credits to successful students. The main providers like Coursera, Udacity, EdX etc only provided certificates of completion that were not educational hard currency and so the search began to find ways of offering MOOCs for credits. One of the earliest initiatives on this front was Colorado State University who offered successful MOOC students from Udacity the opportunity to complement their studies by paying to sit a supervised examination with the reward of university credits. The fees for this were a fraction of the price of taking the equivalent cost on campus and many thought that this would open up a new business model for higher education with major universities producing course content and structure and other universities offering validation and examination opportunities.

The Chronicle of Higher Education writes this week that the scheme at Colorado State has been a total flop so far with no students applying for MOOC validation in the past year: see article A University's Offer of Credit for a MOOC Gets No Takers. Although this sounds like a serious failure I think we should reserve judgement until we get statistics from other similar schemes and when the MOOCs for credit model is more mature. The question at the moment is whether current MOOC participants are even interested in credits; the Udacity students who had the option of going to Colorado State for examination were clearly not interested. A lot of stats I've seen indicate that most are already graduates and are studying out of interest and that MOOCs are mostly a part of lifeline learning rather than seriously competing against traditional higher education. Those of us involved in e-learning and education in general may feel that MOOCs have been hyped to death but out in "the real world" I'm not sure that so many people even know that MOOCs exist. The concept has not reached the people MOOCs are attempting to reach; namely those who have no access to higher education.

So what about MOOCs for credit? If we award credits we need learning outcomes, curriculum, assessment, examination, identity control, administrative requirements etc and once all that's in place isn't this really a regular online university course? I believe that there will be a massive growth in informal learning, encompassing MOOCs and many other forms, and that the demand for validation will increase accordingly but at the moment the demand for crossover (from MOOCs to formal credentials) is simply not there. Evolution takes time and the MOOC wave will develop into new structures and new opportunities but right now we need patience to let organisations try out different solutions.

This is a sentiment that is developed in an article from Inside Higher Ed, Beyond MOOC Hype, where leaders in higher education call on everyone to take a step back from the hype and examine the MOOC phenomenon more critically. It's too soon to make categorical judgements one way or the other but it is time for all parties to seriously examine the opportunities available.

Self-service learning

CC BY-NC-SA Some rights reserved by Kwong Yee Cheng

Take courses from the world's best universities featuring their top professors completely free! That's what we've been hearing about MOOCs for the past two years or so and many articles I've read have swallowed this message almost without question, making claims that MOOCs will sweep away expensive higher education and revolutionize universities. Let's calm down a little now and ask why they are free and what the differences are between MOOCs and the regular university courses (campus or online) that cost money and are based on students meeting entry requirements.

Comparing MOOCs to regular courses is a bit like self-service compared to table service. All the ingredients are in there and you make your own way through the material on your own or in the company of friends. If you have questions there's generally no responsible member of staff available to answer but often someone else in the queue can help since they've eaten here before. The food is generally good but it's up to you how you compose your meal and there's not much guidance available. Some people don't take a full 3-course meal and some only drop in for a coffee but everyone is welcome to drop in when they can. It's much cheaper than a restaurant with table service and highly trained staff and is perfectly adequate in many circumstances. But sometimes we want that special treatment, advice, quality, atmosphere, comfort and exclusivity and we're willing to pay for it. It's not a question of one or the other but they both fill important roles.

There's an excellent article on this theme by Jason Boyers in the Huffington Post, Why MOOCs Miss the Point With Online Learning. He describes how regular online university courses differ from  MOOCs by offering qualified support, clear learning objectives, interaction, engagement and of course examination. It's wrong to say that MOOCs are offering top university education for free - you get some good content and a structure but without the elements that add valuable quality.

"The premise is that you are paying for the same thing you might otherwise get for free, but you are not. There are few things that are equal between a MOOC and high quality online education. You are paying for an engaged faculty member, who is working with you toward course completion. You are paying for meaningful feedback on assessments and documented growth in a higher level of understanding about a topic. You are paying to learn alongside students who all exhibit relatively the same investment in the learning experience as you, and who will likely be there tomorrow to respond to your discussion post. You are paying for an administration that is committed to your course completion because they are accountable for your success. You are paying for content that is part of a larger whole; this course is but one along a journey toward a degree or certificate."

The main point here is that it has taken 10-15 years to develop quality online learning. MOOCs, at least in their high profile form, offer exciting opportunities to make elements of higher education accessible to all but they are not replacing quality online learning any time soon.

Open or closed?

 by Traveller_40

There's a fascinating interview with Harvard professor Clayton Christensen in the Economist that I would like to quote as food for thought, Clayton Christensen: Still disruptive. Christensen is the man behind the concept of disruptive innovation from his 1997 book The Innovator's Dilemma and has some radical views about the role of universities in the post-MOOC world. It is not the technology that is disruptive it's what they enable people to do with it. MOOCs are opening up educational opportunities for millions of people who would otherwise be excluded from higher education. Technology is making mass education possible and affordable and will inevitably affect enrollments at traditional universities. Christensen claims that we are likely to see universities going bankrupt in the near future as competition increases.

However the part of the interview that interests me most concerns research, the main focus of the academic world. In a world already drowning in content we keep producing more and for increasingly small audiences. Christensen questions universities' investment in research which seldom has much impact outside the confines of a narrow research community.

"We are awash in content that needs to be taught, yet the vast majority of colleges give a large portion of their faculties’ salaries to fund research.
The problem is the research that most of them generate isn't useful to anyone except other academics. In business there are five ‘A’ journals in which you have to publish to get promoted to tenure. In one of those five the average article is read by 12 people. If only one in every five research universities stopped doing research, society wouldn't be impaired in the least."

Harsh words there and many will object. But for me the main point here is the dangers of the closed academic system producing ideas and results that remain behind the walls of copyrighted academic journals. In such silos research becomes an exclusive commodity for a restricted audience. However he also offers the promise of increasing openness in education, enabling wider participation and stimulating more meaningful research.

"Almost always great new ideas don't emerge from within a single person or function, but at the intersection of functions or people that have never met before. And most universities are organised so you don't have those intersections. They are siloed. Universities think people come up with great ideas by closing the door. The academic tenure process, where you have to publish to journals which are very narrow, stands in the way of great research."

Read the article: Clayton Christensen: Still disruptive.