Comments on: Napster, Udacity, and the Academy

By: Open Mobile Learning» Blog Archive » Unbundled Learning with OpenPath

Open Mobile Learning» Blog Archive » Unbundled Learning with OpenPath — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 00:57:53 +0000

[...] Learning with OpenPath November 18th, 2012 at 19:57 In the post, “Napster, Udacity, and the Academy,” Clay Shirky connects the current state of higher ed—rising costs, variable quality, [...]

By: Anna H.

Anna H. — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 19:48:49 +0000

> even non-elite universities are still focus points for the local free thinking, openness supporting progressive people of all kinds. If higher education is disrupted, what will take the place of universities as focal points for this community?

That is a $64k question. When should we start working on it?

The Gates Fndn grants (thanks DK) & their goals are very cool. (http://buff.ly/Wc9rwg )
(including “…Better understand different “use cases” for MOOCs…”)

By: Jack Stansbury

Jack Stansbury — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 16:45:31 +0000

I was talking with the vice-provost of a local university about this the other day. She told me the story of a 9-year old girl in Iran that was taking an online Calculus class. When Iran found out she was taking it, they shut off her internet connection. Well, turns out she had made some friends in the class, like a boy in England and another boy somewhere else. When they saw she wasn’t participating in the class anymore (blog or whatever), they figured out how to get her reconnected, and she was able to take the rest of the class.

By: John Iskra

John Iskra — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 15:54:18 +0000

As a professor at a (decidedly non-elite) liberal arts college, I worry about this quite a bit. Not just because my livelihood is being threatened by it, either. My institution belongs to a consortium which won a grant to fund the creation of a medium sized MOOC. I served on the hiring committee for the director/instructor of the program. I asked each candidate, most of whom had some teaching experience at Phoenix or DeVry or some similar on-line ‘school’, the following question: How have you and how do you plan to ensure academic integrity in the course. I always got the same answer. Roughly it was ‘ha! Are you kidding?’ What they told me is that in many cases they were pressured to not pursue suspicions of cheating as that would hurt the bottom line of the institutions. Also, failure was not an option. Again, money was the biggest factor. The push for MOOCs is not coming primarily from students who want to take classes in their pajamas. Instead it is coming from administrators and investors who see a big opportunity to make a big pile of money – just so long as no one cares if any one learns anything. You cite the numbers of people who enrolled in and completed the Stanford AI course. What you don’t cite is the number of students who learned enough to have passed the course. My recollection is that it was something like 2% of the students enrolled. And the percentage is probably smaller given that many of them may have cheated their way to that result. Is that what the future narrative of education looks like? If so, I will be checking, very carefully, the credentials of my doctors and nurses before I count backwards from 100 inhaling the anesthetic.

By: Mark Neustadt

Mark Neustadt — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 15:43:57 +0000

I think one of the questions unanswered by this excellent, substantive post is how much to dynamic and tendencies of the interactive, Web-based network applies in other walks of life. For several years now, we’ve read forecasts and prescriptions from those who are successful in the blogosphere for the economy as a whole. There is no question that the Internet economy creates enormous amounts of value. There is also no question that its promise is not all it is sometimes cracked up to be. The monetarization models are sometimes lacking. Remember the Youtube superstars wandering around a waiting room on Southpark hoping to cash in on their fame.
If the on-line world were the only way to create value then there is little question that the people who could master the new on-line learning universe would be the winners. But what if the on-line world will not be the only, or even the best, way to create value? What if other kinds of social networks will still be important? If that is the case, perhaps we’ll still need institutions that socialize people into particular social practices as a way for them to thrive in life. Shirky, in essence, admits this is the case for social elites, who will still flock to the top 50 USN&WR schools. What if this is also true for other social groups? Then we still need many bricks and mortar institutions.
The point about the MP3 is that its major value is in the area of entertainment. We can’t all make a living repackaging leisure time content. That is not a good long-term model for any society, although granted, it’s a soothing story to tell in America since we are the unchallenged kings when it comes to entertainment.

By: Pete St. Onge

Pete St. Onge — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 15:29:46 +0000

Don Tapscott (Wikinomics / Macrowikinomics) brings up an interesting point as well: Each faculty member in each University teaching a course (eg. Economics 101) each puts together their own course so there are literally hundreds of ‘Econ 101′ courses being taught every year. His reasoning is that there are probably a handful of ‘best ways’ to teach a particular course, so why should so much effort go into creating yet another version of a course that could just as easily come from one of a number of particular ‘stock’ courses that could maintained by a particular institution, or perhaps managed a la wiki — Hence MOOCs.

None of this obviates the other elements of a course — namely, coursework (assignments, projects, etc) and testing (tests and exams), but particularly tutorials. While these can also be ‘canned’ to some extent (say using testing materials provided by the source organization / institution), “multiple guess” might be easier to grade automatically but in my experience essay questions provide a considerably more robust assessment of the student’s learning. I don’t see offhand how that can fit into an automatic grading mechanism, which in my view still necessitates local marking, assessment, and tutoring/tutorials.

An opportunity I see MOOCs provide are as a means to provide the basis for or background for a course, with one or more faculty presenting supplementary or associated material. If MOOCs account for an increasing amount of core courses (the first- and second-year courses that so many people have to take), it should (in theory) free up teaching resources to provide more breadth on upper year courses that provide a greater exposure into deeper / broader areas of study.

One more thing: Our provincial (Ontario) government has come forward and said, gee, wouldn’t it be great if our first- and second-year undergraduate students could take courses as part of their degree program in University A at other universities in the province? Our Universities may ultimately remain places of Higher Learning, but the branding of that learning (eg. I’m a Harvard vs McGill vs U of Toronto vs Trent U grad) may become less important at least at the Undergraduate level, particularly if a growing number of formative courses you take don’t actually originate from the ‘home’ institution.

By: Rearranging Our Sense of What’s Possible « PrattleNog

Rearranging Our Sense of What’s Possible « PrattleNog — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 21:21:57 +0000

[...] his recent post titled Napster, Udacity, and the Academy, Clay Shirky writes a few very important things about the future of higher education that I believe [...]

By: Rockiger

Rockiger — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 15:30:36 +0000

I think MOOCs are exciting development. It’s the first time in human history where you can teach higher education to relatively poor people world wide. Don’t think United States or Europe; think Uganda! All you need is the will to learn and a internet connection; this could be a real game changer.

On the other MOOCs won’t replace classic universitys anytime soon; especially in more practical disciplines like medicine or engineering.

By: Marie Hicks

Marie Hicks — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 23:28:54 +0000

Great, insightful post.

I would add that soon, it’s reasonable to assume, universities will transition to using tools like MOOCs to disseminate research and new knowledge more than traditional publication models (which are also currently in a period of crisis/transition). I think we lack vision when we think of MOOCs as merely low-level teaching tools for getting standardized courses out to anonymous students.

In the long, or even near term, I think MOOCs will have a transformative effect on say, the 50-150 “top” universities through encouraging (or forcing) us to contend with new ways of getting our research out there. This is already underway, actually. I’ve gone into a bit more detail in the response on my blog: http://mariehicks.net/blog/?p=169

By: William Gunn

William Gunn — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 21:05:18 +0000

When I was growing up in a small town in Mississippi, the local university employed about half the town. The university is what allowed the town to be what it was – a tiny speck of blue in a sea of red. When I was recently in Ohio, at Miami U, I noticed that the same was true for the town of Oxford Ohio. Perhaps it’s not well appreciated that even non-elite universities are still focus points for the local free thinking, openness supporting progressive people of all kinds.

If higher education is disrupted, what will take the place of universities as focal points for this community? Do we want to play into the hands of Peter Thiel, a noted foe of higher ed but also Ron Paul’s biggest campaign donor. Are MOOCs promoting libertarianism, almost exclusively at the expense of liberalism, and what effect will that have on progressive society?