Just before my visit to the company last week, Coursera announced a new program called Coursera Specializations that will allow students to use success on specific sets of individual courses to earn a special certificate designed to communicate mastery of a body of knowledge in areas such as education, technology and reasoning/analysis. Each specialization is […]
MOOCs and Lifelong Learners
In both the backlash stories I wrote about last week and responses to my backlash backlash pieces, a certain argument seems to be repeated that asks why schools and investors should be sinking millions into creating educational resources (i.e., MOOCs) that we all know just benefit older, educated, professional (and by implication well-off, middle-class) lifelong […]
Udacity’s Pivot
While I wanted to first deal with some of the excess backlash that latched itself onto recent changes in direction from the MOOC pioneer Udacity, I also don’t want to pretend that their recent “pivot” means nothing with regard to both the reality and perception of online learning (massive, open or otherwise). First off, it […]
Bored with the MOOC Backlash – 2
Given that this site was created to provide perspective that might tamp down some of the over-exuberance I was seeing from MOOC boosters earlier this year, I’m surprised to find myself spending a week taking on the MOOC backlash. While pieces like the NEA story I described yesterday are harsh but informative, recent stories reacting […]
SPOCs
I keep thinking I’m going to run out of things to write about regarding the whole MOOC thing before the year is out. At the same time, the running list of subjects I’ve been trying to get to never seems to shorten. So time to knock a topic off the list that’s been sitting there […]