Taking a break from the usual Monday discussion of what free learning might mean to today’s learners (and college tuition payers) to play a little catch up.
First, welcome to fellow Partially Examined Life fans that may have discovered this site after some of the Twittering that took place following last week’s valentine to Seth, Mark, Wes and Dylan. For some reason, this site gets the biggest traffic bumps whenever there’s an intersection with the world of philosophy, whether that involves a mention on the Leiter Report, or a post APA-crashing discussion of everyone’s favorite passive-aggressive ethical inquiry: The Trolley Problem.
I guess it should come as no surprise that the number of people interested in exploring the big questions philosophy asks is larger even than the number of those curious about massive open online courses. So to give folks interested in finding where those worlds intersect, I’ve created a new Philosophy category that will bring up a list of pieces from this site that might be of interest to the philosophically minded.
Getting back to MOOCs, before the Degree of Freedom newsletter switched its focus from course reviews to a broader discussion of general issues related to free learning, I promised to address the three major potential markets for massive online courses, now that it’s pretty clear MOOCs are not going to be reducing traditional higher education to rubble by next Tuesday.
I managed to get to two of those markets (traditional college-age students and adult learners) before the switchover, which left a third market (non-traditional educational environments, such as those in the developing world) unexamined.
Fortunately, a series that just wrapped up over at EdSurge ended with a story on this very subject, so for those interested in thinking about the future in the post-euphoria, post-backlash MOOC era, a rundown of possible futures can be found at:
EdSurge – MOOCs and the Slope of Enlightenment (Intro)
EdSurge – Finding the Right MOOC Market for College Kids (The College Age Student Market)
EdSurge – Meritable MOOCs for the Mature Crowd (Older Learners)
EdSurge – Imagining MOOCs for a Developing World (Non-traditional markets)
Finally, it’s April vacation for the kids so postings might be a little on the light side the rest of the week. But lots to talk about, from Udacity’s decision to stop issuing free certificates to Hogwarts’ decision to join the MOOC bandwagon, in the coming days and weeks.
Ciao for niao!
Jonathan
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