MOOCs:: Does anyone actually support them?

I have posted comments and debate with opponents of MOOCs (Massive On-line Open Courses) before.  What follows is a response I have submitted to an article in yesterday’s online version of The Chronicle of Higher Education.  The article opens with an extended metaphor:

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Who Is Driving the Online Locomotive?

By Rob Jenkins

Proponents of online learning often use train metaphors to describe its growing impact on the educational landscape. Those of us who teach at two-year colleges, especially, are constantly encouraged, prodded, hectored, cajoled—and sometimes even ordered—to get on board. Otherwise, we're told, we're likely to be run over.

As one who is skeptical regarding the long-term benefits of online learning, I would attest that the train metaphor is pretty apt. I sometimes feel as though I'm standing on the tracks, signaling "proceed with caution," while the online locomotive bears down on me, air horn reverberating.

I suspect others share that vivid nightmare. But what makes it especially sobering now is that, with the advent of MOOCs, the train is picking up steam and we're no longer alone in its destructive path. These days entire departments, disciplines, and even institutions potentially stand in the way, at risk of being pulverized along with the rest of us.

Thinking about that phenomenon has led me to wonder, lately, just who is at the throttle. I think that's a question well worth asking, and the answer ought to inform our response as faculty members. It seems to me that there are only a handful of possibilities:

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Here are the groups he cites as those supposedly in favor of MOOCs but who, in fact, are not: Students enrolled in traditional brick and mortar schools, Faculty Members, Employers, Administrators, and  Politicians.

Are all these groups actually against MOOCS? Read the article and decide for yourself.  But there are some others he does not mention in his article. I thought it might be useful to name a small number of them.

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Thank you for your piece on MOOCs. You like the train trope. On this particular issue, I tend to trot out (pun intended) the Henry Ford quote: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” But maybe a better cliché would be the tried and true elephant in the room. Only in this case there is a whole herd of elephants that are in the room.

 Here are just a few: Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, and the list goes on. The most prestigious schools in the US are behind MOOCs and yet there is not a word about this in your article.

Or how about the just announced IIT agreement? India’s most prestigious schools are now on board if not behind the wheel (For those not familiar with IIT, the students in India call MIT a back up to IIT). And IIT is just one of many of the best schools in the world who are on board with MOOCs.

Or how about Blackboard one of the county’s leading classroom innovators: "Institutions need more flexible options for experimenting with MOOCs and running online courses that meet their individual needs," said Katie Blot, president of education services at Blackboard. "As schools better define how they want to experiment with MOOCs, it's becoming clear that the best platform is usually the one they already have. Through our new platform, we are enabling schools to bridge their enterprise LMS and their MOOC platform in key areas such as content and social learning spaces."

Or how about the big money crowd: "Coursera, a big provider of massive open online courses, or MOOCs, said Wednesday it raised $43 million in funding from GSV Capital, Laureate Education, Learn Capital, venture capitalist Yuri Milner and the investment arm of the World Bank. All told, Coursera has banked $65 million since last April, Melissa Korn writes." (from WSJ blog). And what about Bill Gates and his multimillions? The Chronicle just ran a big story on how his money is influencing education to too great a degree on issues like MOOCs and yet he does not merit a mention in this piece. Or Salman Khan, whose Khan Academy provides free access to millions and is a part of the thought innovators working on MOOCs?

This herd is numerous but the most important ‘elephants’, at least to me, are the people of the world. Anyone with a mobile phone can get access to MOOC content. How many mobile users are there in the world today?  5.8 billion. And most of them have access to MOOC content.  If this is not a revolutionary change in education, then I guess I am just a wide-eyed idealist that does not understand how education works. But what about those who do not speak English? How can they access MOOCs usefully?

How many colleges can offer courses in these languages? MOOC provider Coursera is partnering with 10 organizations from eight countries to translate courses into other languages, including Japanese, Ukrainian, Kazakh, Arabic, Russian, Portuguese and Turkish. In a press release, Coursera co-founder Andrew Ng said, "Many of our students are already taking advantage of user-generated subtitles in our courses, and we believe that having translations will significantly improve the learning experience for non-native English speakers".

To help with translation, Coursera will be joined by a number of prominent universities, nonprofit organizations, corporations and translation companies from around the globe. These include Koc University, Victor Pinchuk Foundation, Digital October, Es Corporation, Lemann Foundation, Meedan, and Tagreedat. Each Coursera Global Translation Partner will be responsible for translating three to five courses, which should be to ready for consumption by September of this year.” The institutions that are supporting and providing translation services for our free online courses are helping to make the educational content on Coursera more accessible to the millions of people around the world who stand to benefit from these resources but are not fluent in English," said Daphne Koller, Coursera's other founder. "The potential to impact global education is greatly elevated by our ability to bridge language barriers."Coursera already counts 16 international schools among its partner institutions, with courses currently available in Chinese, French, Italian and Spanish. Additionally, the MOOC provider is teaming with Transifex, a worldwide localization platform, to host its translatable content, and allow organizations and individuals to update translations from anywhere. For now, students can check individual class pages on the Coursera site for details about upcoming translation options.

And what of the price tag for all of this global access? It’s free. How many schools can compete with this? Which is why traditional educators are in a fix. Their schools, jobs, students etc. are all in jeopardy. It is no wonder that the vast majority of people in education are worried about MOOCs. They should be.

But to end with another cliché, the horse is out of the barn; but the story doesn’t end there:  this horse, iron or flesh, is quickly being transformed into a silicon valley skinned mode of educational transport that crosses the globe in bits and milliseconds, free, to all who have the desire to change their lives through hard work and effort.

                                         Allegory: MOOCS come to town?

Note: I submitted these comments 12 hours ago (12:00 am, July 25, 2013) to the discussion in the Chronicle but they have yet to be included. The comments here were never accepted for reasons I am unsure of. I wrote asking why and never received a reply.