AMOOC is a free massive open online course. There are hundreds of MOOCs, many coming from the best schools in the country. MOOCs have gone global in the past year, and millions of students are taking them.
Some want credit for a degree or job. Others just want lifelong learning. There are touching stories about how MOOCs are enabling people everywhere who wouldn’t otherwise have access to top-tier education.
The Internet, the cloud, social media, laptops, streaming video, database analytics, big TVs, smartphones and tablets are the perfect storm for MOOCs.
No surprise that academia is excited. Top schools are offering MOOCs, including Berkeley, Caltech, Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford and Yale. Impressed yet?
Some notable organizations, old and new, are developing and administering MOOCs, including Coursera, EdX, Google, iTunesU, Kahn Academy, ProctorU, Udacity and Udemy, to name a few.
The largest MOOCs developer is Coursera, a year-old startup associated with Stanford that already has enrolled 2 million students. It’s growing faster than Facebook and Twitter.
The medium is short video lectures, often on YouTube. You can watch them slowly and more than once. There are huge monitored discussion groups. There are exercises, assignments, exams and projects. The technology is better every day.
MOOCs typically have excellent teachers, selected more on teaching talent than academic achievement. One day they’ll all be paid like movie stars.
Hundreds of thousands of students can compare ideas in a diversity of exchange beyond anything possible in the classroom. Once teachers teach MOOCs, it’s hard for them to go back to the classroom.
In a recent column in The New York Times, Thomas Friedman called it a revolution. He said, "Nothing has more potential to unlock a billion more brains to solve the world’s biggest problems." And this is only the beginning.
MOOC developers are both for-profit and nonprofit. Coursera is funded by venture capital; Kahn Academy gets grants. Although MOOCs are still free, schools will charge for credit, and it’s likely that developers and schools will be charging and sharing revenue for related services.
That revenue is likely to be raised through the sale of completion certificates and transcripts, proctoring, test data, evaluations, tutoring and sponsorships. Those services will improve the quality and student experience in MOOCs.
But MOOCs have limits, too. How massive can they be? How accurate can grading be with so many students? How can cheating be avoided? And how can students be motivated to finish?
Will students choose MOOCs over classrooms? Will students and employers be satisfied with certificates and transcripts over formal degrees? And will the schools survive what happens then?
The American Council on Education recently recommended degree credit for five MOOCs by Coursera. The schools may or may not accept those recommendations. Coursera hopes ACE will recommend credit for more of its MOOCs.
Once we get over accreditation, we still have to convince employers that MOOCs are as good as classroom courses. They might resist, giving old-line online schools, like the University of Phoenix, an edge.
Some feel that MOOCs can never replace the classroom experience. But the cost of campus life — room, board, tuition and books — is already well out of control. Is the difference worth it?
The top schools aren’t worried about diluting their brand with MOOCs. The risk is greater for other schools, which may be driven to drop classroom courses when they bring in the MOOCs. On the other hand, great MOOCs from great schools can give them academic cover.
While millions of students around the world are taking MOOCs, what’s Hawaii been doing? Do you know anyone who has enrolled in one?
UH needs to do a quick pivot on MOOCs. The administrative structure can be in the Outreach College. It has a downtown office, and it has Pacific New Media, which is computer-savvy and connected with experts on educational software.
First, MOOCs should be integrated into the UH curriculum by making them eligible for transfer credits, or as introductory or remedial courses or to complement classroom courses, especially those that are over-enrolled, with credit.
UH should also design MOOCs for Hawaii’s areas of expertise, including agriculture, energy, Asian culture, hospitality and tropical medicine, for example. MOOCs on those subjects would be a perfect project for the new regents to take up.
To incentivize students to take MOOCs, we may need to incentivize our schools and employers to accept them. For that, we may need legislation. In the end it’s all about the workforce and jobs.
MOOCs are transforming higher education. If we don’t want to be left behind, we’ll have to adapt. Given what’s happening, the sooner the better. Really, aren’t MOOCs perfect for an island state?
———
Jay Fidell, a longtime business lawyer, founded ThinkTech Hawaii, a digital media company that reports on Hawaii’s tech and energy sectors of the economy. Reach him at fidell@lava.net.
