MOOCs and the future of Higher Education

Would xMOOCs revolutionize Higher Education?

Here in MOOCs on the move: How Coursera is disrupting the traditional classroom, the question could be: Would such disruption lead to better education and learning in HE?  What are the impacts of these movements on educators and learners at a social, psychological and behavioral level?

There are lots of posts praising the greatness of MOOCs.  This one on massive-open-online-courses-transform-higher-education-and-science highlights that xMOOCs is transforming Higher Education and Science.  See this post too.

So, what would be the future of MOOCs and Higher Education?

Dave posted this Where do you see online education in 20 years? where he shares his concerns about MOOCs.

Dave predicts the 4 scenarios:

Case 1 – MOOC kills higher education

Case 2 – Analytics university

Case 3 – Corporate takeover

Case 4 – Community university

I see MOOCs as a phenomena based on Swarm Intelligence and Opportunistic Education, which is now “viewed” as a hype and disruptive innovation and technology to Higher Education.

How do people think about xMOOCs?

After watching this video, I started to realize that US does have a culture of “appreciation” as Tal mentioned, when promoting MOOCs.  The message could be simple: “If we don’t appreciate MOOCs, we would depreciate MOOCs”

Since the introduction of xMOOCs in 2011, I could sense a lot of gratitude and appreciation by the public media and many participants of xMOOCs.  See my collection of posts here.

There are lots of critics and media coverage on the “appreciation AND depreciation of MOOCs”.  If I were to recount the appreciation to depreciation, I think it could be 90% to 10% among media, whilst in the academic world it seems to be totally different, with less appreciation by many educators in particular.  Why?  I don’t have the answers here, and I don’t think it is possible to generalize the reasons behind such “pessimism” among the academics and educators.

I could see the xMOOCs are still based around instructivism, and it should be a good news for educators and professors, since this is still a pedagogy centered around the importance of teachers as the center of education.  Why would teachers and professors support the xMOOCs if that is the case?  There are lots of potential “problems” which are not easily identified here.

First, would the continuation of xMOOCs diminish and disrupt the role of traditional Higher Education and the associated traditional “face-to-face” and classroom delivery?

Second, what would be the future of educators and professors who are not engaged or involved in MOOCs?  Would they still be continuing their teaching with the conventional courses that have been delivered for years?  Would they need to “compete” with the rock-star professors who are teaching in the xMOOCs? How would their future employment be determined?

Third, we have found divided opinions as to what people (educators and learners) are expecting from these xMOOCs.  Some would like to see more engagements and interaction by the professors, in order to improve the delivery of “instruction”.  Others are using the opportunity of MOOCs to try out their ways of teaching (flipped learning) and automated and peer grading and assessment on massive number of students.  Many providers are also looking forward to make lots of profits out of this “model” of education, as they have to ensure an adequate return on investment, for the Venture Capitalists and the stakeholders.

Fourth, the future of Higher Education has now reached a crossroad where most of us don’t know what would be a financially sound and sustainable education model that would “save” Higher Education.  For me, I wish to see more positives coming out from both the xMOOCs and cMOOCs, as they could surely help in “educating the world”, by providing open and free education to anyone seeking one.

I have posted this on FB, Twitter, and Google +:

Let’s see who could rightly predict what would happen to HE & MOOCs in 2013 & 2014. Like to create & post a post/tweet & check it next year?