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"MOOCs are a very interesting development, and have some potential to bring about major changes in the post-secondary education system.
However, they are only a side show to most online educational developments. Many other interesting things are happening and these are being drowned out by the hysteria and hyperbole surrounding MOOCs. It seems any new development in online learning has to be called a MOOC to get any recognition (even if it is neither massive nor open).
We need to get back to a sense of proportion here. It’s not the number of enrolments that matters, but the learning that takes place. For-credit online programs have had to prove that students can learn just as well online as on campus. There is over 20 years experience of what works and what doesn’t in credit-based online learning that is being ignored in most (but not all) MOOC developments. Not a single MOOC has been able to demonstrate clear learning gains for the students (or a viable financial model, for that matter). When that happens, they deserve to be taken seriously. Until then, I suggest you focus on the real world."
Via Peter B. Sloep
This post by Tony Bates begins with listing and discussing some more or less interesting developments in the MOOC world. One is about allowing people who 'pass a MOOC' into the regular, online programme in which the course features (this is essentially what the 'open' in Open Universities refers to), another is about courses that seem to adopt the name MOOC without really being massive or open. The latter probably prompted the remark quoted in full in the above, with which I wholeheartedly agree! We are well past the stage in which MOOCs are an experiment in educational technology, they now have been usurped by the 'market forces' and are used for their various purposes. Let's make sure we educators see through that and assess MOOCs for their educational merits or lack thereof. (@pbsloep)