The One Laptop Per Child Correlation With Massive Open Online Courses

By Oscar Becerra. A recent article by The New York Times describes a software application that will grade student essays using artificial intelligence to ease professors’ workload when working with large quantities of students like the ones registered for MOOCs.
The article generated many comments; most of them can be classified under two categories. First are the ones questioning such approach based on the poor quality of the feedback and the low level of human interaction which they consider the key to real high quality learning like what happens in Ivy League kind of universities as Harvard, MIT, Yale, Berkeley and the like. The second category refers to the people who may successfully try to cheat the system by getting positive feedback to nonsense writing or the equivalent to good grades with poor or no learning.
What surprises me is how far off are these critics of the real target population whom the MOOCs really benefit. Nobody may question the quality of education at an Ivy League university is outstanding and superior to most universities worldwide, online or not, with artificial or human intelligence involved in the process, for those who can pay for it. Read more...