Punked

By Brian. Stephen Downes’s recently wrote a post on the great rebranding of MOOCs, arguing “MOOCs were not designed to serve the missions of the elite colleges and universities. They were designed to undermine them, and make those missions obsolete.” It clearly struck a nerve with a lot of people I know, generating a remarkable amount of commentary from the likes of Jim Groom, David Kernohan, Martin Weller, Tony Hirst, David Wiley, D’Arcy Norman, Pat Lockley, Richard Hall, and undoubtedly others… The back-and-forth in the comments on Jim’s, David K’s, and D’Arcy’s blog posts are passionate, even angry, illustrating just how deeply these questions can cut.
My own contribution to this discourse will be somewhat trivial and self-centred in comparison to the discussion above, and I feel just a tiny bit guilty for that. I’m prompted by this post by Darren Draper. Read more...