As most readers of this blog know, I have great enthusiasm for online learning. A good deal of my work in the last decade has focused on the fusion of educational technology with biomedical and health informatics [7-10]. However, the result has mostly been education based on the traditional model of the professor teaching and interacting with a relatively modest number of students.
MOOCs change the calculus of online learning in a much more profound way. Stanford computer science professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller have been at the forefront, adapting and delivering their courses to massive audiences [4, 6]. They are part of a new technology venture led by Stanford and including several other big-name US universities called Coursera. Not to be left out, Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology have also launched a similar initiative.
Despite their high profiles, these are not the first such initiatives to disseminate high-quality higher education content via the Web. Two other initiatives, Udacity and the Khan Academy, have been doing this for several years. Resources like the University of Pittsburgh Epidemiology Supercourse have been in existence even longer.
Will these MOOCs lead to disruption in higher education? The cynic in me notes that Ng and Koller are not changing the core Stanford product, where a small number of highly smart students pay a substantial amount of money in the form of Stanford tuition for the privilege of being on the Palo Alto campus and getting a degree from Stanford. I also note that these courses are mostly basic courses, and not the more advanced knowledge that might help someone apply this information. The content is “open” in the sense of being available to anyone, but not in the “wiki” sense of being improved upon in a massive way.
But the optimist in me with the goal of spreading knowledge via technology cannot help but be impressed at the uptake and reach of these courses. I certainly enjoy the global interaction I have through the various educational activities in which I take part in on the Internet. Even Facebook can sometimes be a platform for disseminating knowledge and doing what I enjoy most as an educator, which is getting people to both delve into deeper layers of fact as well as apply them in larger contexts and intellectually principled ways.