Too Much MOOC

Posted by Kenneth Ronkowitz on

mooc hysteria


Too much MOOC. I can't keep up. And the news is all over the place.

Massive Open Online Courses exploded in 2012.

Then we have one MOOC melt down last month and all the non-believers start yelling "I told you so."  Well, luckily, not everyone. A few wise observers recognize that MOOC disasters are human and part of educational innovation. Sandboxes are good. We learn more from failures than successes.

Clay Shirky, a big name, got some flak for saying  that "Your Massively Open Offline College Is Broken. Although he is talking about MOOCs, he is really talking much bigger.  "MOOCs are a lightning strike on a rotten tree. Most stories have focused on the lightning, on MOOCs as the flashy new thing. I want to talk about the tree."

And bouncing right back from that "failed" MOOC, there is more and more news about ways that organizations (not always schools) are working to add credits to MOOCs.  MOOC + credit = something that schools don't want to think about - but should.

And don't think this is some American phenomenon. Every day I see another global MOOC story.

I have to keep following MOOCs. I will be teaching one in April. If you are in higher education - if you are in Education - you can't ignore them. But I need to pay a little less attention to them.

Dear Reader: You can follow Stephen Downes Daily MOOC Newsletter at http://www.downes.ca/news/OLDaily.htm and get the news. Be careful. It's seductive. The monster needs to be fed.

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