MOOCs Will Come and Mostly Go Like Other EduTech Fads

By Kentaro Toyama. MOOCs – massively open online courses – are the latest hit in educational technologies. MIT and Harvard have partnered on EdX, and Stanford computer-science professors have kicked off Coursera and Udacity. Meanwhile, Bill Gates and others fawn over the Khan Academy. University of Virginia president, Teresa Sullivan, was even temporarily ousted because she was not perceived by her board of trustees as moving quickly enough to start UVA’s own MOOC-like offering. So, is all of this hype justified? I tend to think not. And to explain why, it will help to categorize MOOCs into three types: 1, 2, and 3. Read more...