Why MOOC's Are Just a Phase

It’s new, it’s “innovative,” and it’s big, the thinking goes. So it must be the answer.

Siva Vaidhyanathan suggests this as the main rationale that comes with universities' decisions to implement MOOCs in the article "What's the Matter With MOOCs."   Vaidhyanathan goes on to point out the problems that are inherent in today's current MOOC-crazed edunet. MOOC's basically reproduce lectures for passive consumption while leaving little room for what truly constitutes education:

Education is the creation of habits of thought and methods of inquiry that yield unpredictable results. We offer diplomas to people upon completion of a rigorous and diverse set of intellectual experiences—not the mere accumulation of a series of facts and techniques. Education is certainly not an injection of information into a passive receptacle.

I tend to lump the uprising popularity of TEDTalks into the same category of MOOCs. They're interesting (sometimes!) to watch or listen to, but I'm not going to list them on my CV. These two edumedia trends work great in our fast-paced world just as audio books do. But is there any real educational value in MOOCs?

No, and that's why they represent a phase. MOOCs are either a soon-to-be dying phase as universities realize the folly of spending money to produce free lectures, or perhaps they are the next phase towards a more substantial piece of our educational future. Now I'd like to think they are leading toward a tertiary education that truly is open and free to more people in America. I would love to receive credit from a Harvard MOOC but alas, Writing the Novel is an online course that costs $1250 ($2200 for graduate credit!).

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