Unequal Classrooms: What Online Education Cannot Teach

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Unequal Classrooms: What Online Education Cannot Teach
Jennifer M. Morton, The Chronicle: The Conversation, July 31, 2013
It doesn't take much to jump from "what can't online education teach?" to "what can't MOOCs teach?" but that's the state of play in today's educational discourse, where terms like 'MOOC' (and, for that matter, 'free' and 'open') can mean whatever you want them to (and where, somehow, 'education' has come to mean 'memorization' and 'school' now means 'job training'). Anyhow, philosophy professor Jennifer M. Morton tells us "college is the first place where they will be asked to defend a position and to engage in vigorous intellectual debate. It is also likely to be the first place where they have to consistently engage with middle-class students and professors and navigate middle-class social norms." You know, this whole 'social norms' and 'interpersonal communication' thing. More...