

MOOCs could be disastrous for students and professors - michaelochurch
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/07/moocs_could_be_disastrous_for_students_and_professors.html/#

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mathattack
I'm pro-MOOC, but I think he's attacking the wrong straw man. Because the
costs are so low, a high drop out rate is fine.

If you want to experiment on a subject in a 30 person live class, the
financial and opportunity cost (taking someone else's seat) is high. In a MOOC
it's a non issue.

I also think that it's not the current $2700/course teachers that have to be
afraid. MOOCs still will require some aspect of human intervention for
grading, and there will still be some in-person coursework needed. The people
who should be nervous are the current Phd students who want to be tenure
track. Future tenure track spots will disappear for everyone who isn't a rock
star researcher.

I view the future model as "Anything with an existing body of knowledge will
go the way of MOOCs, and live discussion classes will be smaller and focused
on subjects that require more debate." This is actually good for the
humanities.

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michaelochurch
_Because the costs are so low, a high drop out rate is fine._

Self-education is a different model. It's more fault-tolerant. You fail (as
in, don't understand) about 30-50% of the stuff you try-- at least, that's my
noncomprehension/loss-of-interest rate when I attack a random-ass paper-- but
that's okay, because it just means you fill up the prerequisites and get back
to it.

MOOCs are making self-education _much_ easier. With lectures split up into 5-
to 10-minute pieces (that's good and bad) you can watch them on the train or
even at work. I feel like one place where MOOCs are really going to kill is in
corporate training; companies will realize that MOOCs provide resources and
(for a fee) people to build their in-house "here's how you use our shit"
tutorials better than what's out there in most places. Of course, that will
also make it easier for people to use MOOCs at work; I like that, but I'm not
sure it's what typical corporate managers want.

College education is based on a different model with a known, fairly static
prerequisite graph and a low tolerance of failure-- but failure (even defined
as a grade of D or F, and C for in-major) is also pretty rare. College is this
packed-tight model (designed for efficiency in time by providing an immersive
community) where you get (in theory) what'd be 8-12 years of self-education in
130 weeks spread out over 4 years.

However, the world changes fast enough that this "learn, then earn" model
doesn't make any sense. Education has to be more interleaved than it used to
be.

Also, 18 years old used to be an adult; but our culture is so incoherent and
(I can't find a values-neutral word for it) chaotic that adulthood now is
about 24-27. I think college _was_ an extremely efficient educational process
when it was full of adults; but now it's full of kids, not because admissions
changed but because society did.

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michaelochurch
Just to be clear about it, I'm pro-MOOC. However, I think there is an
interesting discussion here.

