By Robert Elder - Chronicle Vitae. Opponents of MOOCs and the "adjunctification" of higher education ended 2013 riding high on a wave of righteous indignation and schadenfreude. First, there was the acknowledgment by Sebastian Thrun, founder of Udacity, that his company will retool itself to focus on corporate education in light of its well-known failures in the higher education sector. Next, there was the heartbreaking story of Margaret Mary Vojtko, an elderly (and, it now appears, mentally troubled) adjunct at Duquesne University who died a lonely death after the job she loved was slowly reduced to nothing. See more...

By Donald Beagle. Back in 2004-05, while I was writing The Information Commons Handbook (ALA / Neal-Schuman, 2006), I became keenly interested in the potential for Massive Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) to be morphed into web-based learning environments by enterprising and creative faculty in collaboration with librarians. I was especially struck by a) the extraordinary size and scope of the typical MMOG player base, and b) the remarkable degree of user engagement and persistence. I called attention to these factors in my book, because I saw the new academic library framework of the Information Commons and Learning Commons as possible platforms for MMOG learning-model development by faculty and MMOG learning-model engagement by students. These possibilities seemed to me exciting, and potentially transformative. More...

By Brenda Burmeister. At the beginning of “History and Future of (Mostly) Higher Education,” the students in both the MOOC and the face-to-face class at Duke University were asked to write about their favorite teacher. I didn’t hesitate in my answer: Karen Hevelston. Her first day was as a substitute in my high-school art class. After dutifully giving the assigned painting project, she strolled through the grouped tables quietly making comments. I was hunched over, sardonically painting, “I don’t want to paint.” After a pause, she asked the unthinkable, “Well, what do you want to do?”
Karen Hevelston did something that is hard for any teacher, regardless of the classroom. More...

By Kaysi Holman. It was the second Google Hangout On Air broadcast for the “History and Future of (Mostly) Higher Education.” Professors and students at three universities—Duke, Stanford, and the University of California at Santa Barbara—were engaged in conversation while dozens of viewers watched, asking questions in the Google Hangout and in the MOOC forums and live-tweeting the session. Seven minutes in, without warning, Google Hangout stopped recording and broadcasting. Viewers were left with blank screens, and there was no way to show the session later … and the seconds were ticking past. A quick Google search offered no solutions, and the interface was not responding. What to do?
This was precisely my situation four weeks ago. Here’s what I did. More...

By Cathy Davidson. What remains from a MOOC after the final video has ended and the last paper has been peer-assessed? The most exciting part of my recent MOOC on the “History and Future of (Mostly) Higher Education” was the spirited exchanges among the participants. So that is the question. How can a MOOC be more than a “one off”? What remains for the participants after the MOOC is over? What infrastructure is required beyond the MOOC platform to turn a massive learning experience into a movement in the real world?
Before I address this movement, I should mention that I had two quite different kinds of motivations for signing up to teach a MOOC offered by my university, Duke, on the Coursera platform. More...

While the Commission has released a new “Opening Up Education” Communication, the European University Association (EUA) has published its second Occasional Paper on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). In line with the first paper released at the beginning of 2013, the publication follows up on recent developments in the field in the EU but also beyond. The paper interestingly discusses for instance the cost-efficient argument related to MOOCs: those e-courses promise high quality learning for a large number at low costs but are undercutting the costs of other online learning models and preserving superior learning quality really compatible and realistic? Can they really solve the problems of mass education, i.e. the consequences of the ratio one educator/massive number of students? More...