A recap of some of the MOOC economics discussions from earlier this week (as well as a surprising comment I hope to respond to) over at Huffington Post.
The MOOC Gorilla
When I started an economic discussion of MOOCs and what they’re worth, I anticipated someone would bring up the two-ton-ape economic controversy surrounding free online college-level courses: their impact on the traditional academy. I didn’t anticipate that this would coincide with yesterday’s story regarding the high-profile refusal of the Philosophy Department at San Jose University […]
xMOOC vs. cMOOC
I only learned recently that I’ve not been enrolled in MOOC classes at all, but have instead been involved with something called an xMOOC. At first I was curious why anyone would want to eliminate the only saving grace of the MOOC acronym (its pronounceability), but apparently two variations are meant to distinguish the type […]
The MOOC Experiment
One of the benefits of this project getting so much traction is that it gives me the opportunity to engage in conversations with people working in the independent learning space on a daily basis. It’s hard to believe it’s been less than two years since Stanford’s AI course got overenrolled by a hundred thousand students, […]
Cheers and Jeers for MOOCs!
Just about everyone I know sent me a copy of this piece that appeared in the most recent New York Times Sunday Week in Review. The fellow who wrote the piece (A.J. Jacobs, Editor at Large for Esquire Magazine) shares my journalistic passion for reporting from the inside. (Perhaps he also grew up reading Black […]