MOOC is not a dirty word… at least for the student | Sharon Perry
See on Scoop.it – Things I Grab (Here and There): THgsIGrbHT
“From a student point of view, a MOOC is a wonderful opportunity to try something for free, with no obligation if it doesn’t work out, or if circumstances force a change of mind.”
Comment: Sharon is absolutely right, open content, free course are great resources, valuable supplements to what there already is out there. I myself have dipped my toes into MOOCs – never fully completed them, though – and even today was tempted to subscribe to the SpanishMooc.org. And I think many of the academics getting involved in MOOCs look upon them in this way too: hey, is this an interesting channel to use for sharing my thoughts or expertise with the rest of the world?
But remember, academic publishing in the eyes of academics is free too, by and large. It is the publisher that make money and the institutions that pay. Likewise with MOOCs, it is the institutions that have invested in the professor’s salary that helped her become the expert she now is; it is the platforms and their funders, the venture capitalists, which reap the benefits, or at least intend to. Before we know it, they run the show, as publishers do with the impact rankings that in many countries at least in part dictate research policy (cf. the UK’s research excellence framework). We should beware not to make the same mistake with something which is even more vulnerable and should be even more dear to use, the way we educate our children. While I understand Sharon that is why I would like to underscore something she says in parenthesis, namely that we should _not yet_ fear MOOCs. Indeed, but once we realise we should have, we may find ourselves in a Faustian pact with the devil. Already MOOCs turn out be not so open as their names suggest. (peter sloep, @pbsloep)
See on blogs.cetis.ac.uk
6 responses to “MOOC is not a dirty word… at least for the student | Sharon Perry”
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- - May 10, 2013
Things I grab, motley collection 
First off, Spanishmooc.org doesn’t seem to work, did you mean spanishmooc.com? Secondly, I think publishers, at least at the outset, were doing an amazing thing – they found the way to scale knowledge transfer through mass production of books. I think MOOCs are the next level of that – scaling instruction through the Internet… It’s the next generation in evolution of education. I agree that things may go awry with this next generation as they have in the prior – the publishers got too much power. But that doesn’t mean the solution would have been to stop printing books.
I think you’re referring to another scoop, relative to course of Spanish level 1, present one being about MOOC at large.
You mentioned in the text of this one “and even today was tempted to subscribe to the SpanishMooc.org,” so I tried to check it out but the site doesn’t seem to exist. The rest of my comment was on the entire sentiment of your post about MOOCs in general, nothing specific to Spanish MOOC.
you’re right, I was referring to the original article [http://blogs.cetis.ac.uk] and in the process of ‘scooping’ took an additional comment by, I believe, peter sloep.
Thank you for your interesting comment on my blog post. I like your analogy of the Faustian Pact when it comes to the future of MOOCs – and you are likely to be correct! But at the moment, people are just enjoying access to free education, anytime, anywhere, that they might not get otherwise. Let’s see if the interest in MOOCs continues if they are monetized.