Edit: Following a brief Twitter exchange with Dr. Cramer I want to note the following – The quote below is but a snippet of a 30 minute conversation and is probably missing a lot of context. Dr. Cramer has put out a call for proposals for MOOCs to explore their potential at the University of Minnesota.
MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are all the rage these days. You can hardly turn a corner without running into some discussion about MOOCs. As the name suggests, MOOCs are online courses designed for self-directed study and made available to large numbers of learners. What’s more, the reigning view is that they are made available for no cost to the learner. MOOCs are being backed by some very high profile players in the higher education market in the US, ex. Stanford, MIT and Harvard. Others, however, are somewhat skeptical and cautious. For example, Dr. Christopher Cramer (self-proclaimed MOOC skeptic according to his Twitter profile), who was recently appointed “faculty liaison for e-learning initiatives” at the University of Minnesota, had this to say in this morning’s Star Tribune,
‘MOOCs have been around for a long time. They’re called books,’ said U chemistry Prof. Christopher Cramer. ‘The model removes an instructor from the equation … so what’s left is just content. It may be really well-designed content, if you’re willing to spend the money, but it’s just content.’
He doesn’t sound very optimistic about MOOCs, as far as I can tell.
But what are MOOCs exactly? MOOCs are online courses that are made to be completed by large groups of learners – often numbering in the thousands. Given the large numbers of anticipated learners, the role of the instructor, other than designing the course, is at a bare minimum, if any at all. So, for the most part, it’s a course that’s set up for self-directed study, just with a whole lot of learners. All of these factors are taken into account when MOOCs are designed. The result is that, although many MOOCs originate as traditional on-site courses, what emerges is a very different type of course that draws from theories that emphasize the social aspects of learning. Thus, the design encourages learners to network among themselves to construct online learning communities. That doesn’t sound like a “book” to me.
Eventually, if MOOCs pan out the way many hope, they will become a means for educators to construct effective outlets for sharing new knowledge being created within educational institutions with the public. As far as the public is concerned, MOOCs will significantly increase their ability to keep up with the increasingly high rate of change in their various fields of work or study.
So, is Cramer right? Are MOOCs little more than a “book” in regards to their capacity as learning tools? I don’t think so and I find Cramer’s comments rather disappointing. To say that MOOCs are merely a modern manifestation of the “book” is to overlook so much of what MOOCs can offer. The “book” analogy suggests that those who participate in MOOCs do so as lone individuals in a solitary personal learning environment. But, that’s not the case at all. Almost all MOOCs build in opportunities for a range of social participative activities. To think that MOOC-learners learn in solitary environments is as if to suggest that people who play modern online games (ex. MMPORGs – no, it’s not a coincidence that there’s a similarity between this acronym and MOOC) do so in solitude. Anyone who has had an opportunity to encounter gamers in face-to-face settings will know that there is little solitude in their gaming. The relationships that are formed among players are, in fact, remarkably intimate and have a conspicuous social dimension which easily extends beyond the gaming environment. There’s no reason why MOOC environments cannot be the same. What they will become depends on the instructors who construct them and the learners that participate in them.
Cramer’s comments suggest to me that some of the people that are meant to lead the University of Minnesota’s efforts in these matters are not prepared to entertain the possibilities that MOOCs afford, and I think that they are many and significant. We need to open our eyes to MOOCs’ potential to become dynamic online social arenas for learning and to consider not only how this can benefit the learners, but also the educational institution, by opening it up to the society that it is meant to serve. Done right, I think everyone stands to gain from MOOCs.
Some currently available MOOCs:
