Has technology at last advanced to the point where the revolutionary promise of personalized learning for everyone can be fulfilled? We don’t know yet; but even at this early juncture, the strengths and weaknesses of this radically new form of education are coming into focus. Whether digital education lives up to the hype or not, it will still force administrators and professors to reconsider many of their assumptions about the form and meaning of teaching. For better or worse, the Net’s disruptive forces have arrived at the gates of academia. But let’s not forget technology is not a solution, it’s an enabler, a medium and a starting point.

Thanks for the good overview and thoughtful comments, Michael.

Although the MOOCs offered by Coursera and the other big players have captured a lot of attention over the past year-and-a-half or so, these are very different from the earlier (connectivist) MOOCs that were first offered in 2008 by George Siemens and Stephen Downes. Their aim was (and is) to enable individuals to create and learn through their own personal learning networks, and to understand how to use and contribute to global knowledge networks. Coursera and other for-profit initiatives are easy to criticise for their reliance on celebrity academics, the lecture format and machine marking. Few would like to see venture capital funded dot com startups to displace public provision and oversight of higher education. To MOOC or not to MOOC -- that is the question that many are asking. However, there are many other ways to make strategic use of open, networked, collaborative strategies to enable innovations in higher education.

Folks, the goal with MOOCs is to capture
k-college classrooms with online canned courses. We see these first few
years citizens NOT using this platform and not finding online classes
beneficial and yet they are pushing them.....it will not
be better or increasing access.....it will be ghettoization and will
lead to profit-driven schools that will hit the lower-class hardest.
Middle-class public schools will survive? REALLY?

I couldn't agree more in spite of the thorough treatment of the subject in this essay. The reality is here's another "revolution" that is merely MORE privatization of education. First the charters, big money-maker, then the testing industry, billions of pocketed money. Except for a few students who learn in this fashion, provided what they are learning is good pedagogy, and what they are learning fits their needs, this excuse for education on this scale is preposterous unless you are on the selling end, the exploitation end. This is an extension of the dumbing down of America. Who will profit from that? Poorly "educated" people, incompetent young people hungry for a job, a life, will fit into the lock-step, ask-no-questions-just-do-your-job niche. Millions of them.

God save us from the capitalization of education.
We have experienced this now for 20+ years & can see the disastrous consequences.
Not the least is the substitution of training for education, research for profit instead of for the public. Excessive pay for 'management' & slave wages for the workers. Kids treated as consumers, not as future citizens. Education is a lot more than regurgitation of content with fierce grading for future acceptance by large corporations.
Senior academics deserve a kick in the ass for their self-serving, narrow minded concerns; pathetic excuses for research instead of quality teaching, too many useless journals, too many high-priced conferences.
It's time for them to wake up. MOOCs are NOT the answer. Most degrees today only qualify graduates to become paper pushers - jobs that can be readily outsourced.
Ernst & Young are one of the largest accounting firms that live well off their corporate pandering. Most professionals have sold out years ago to Big Money - another example of industrial style thinking by the masters of simplification.

And here I thought MOOCS stood for MatchbOOk Correspondence Schools! How wrong i wasn't...

This was inevitable. So many forces have stepped up to challenge the old ways
of academia. Most recently, financial challenges have tended to separate many
from the hope of a "traditional" education.

But in many ways this is a blessing. Society has become fiercely independent,
wisely learning to learn "on their own" with thanks to online
knowledge access. Not just from courses, mind you, but from an infinite
array of knowledge resources.

Academia also framed its own descent. At one time the quality of teaching and
student mentoring was hailed as primary. Now that has taken a backseat to
"research," in many cases a shamefully weak excuse for not putting
student needs first. As a retired professor who was often blasted for
"caring too much about the students," I saw what might be best
described as "hobby research" with little if any social or learning
significance hailed as "quality research" by universities. And
those who frequently published what was often drivel in startlingly limited
"academic journals" hailed and rewarded--even if they were hideous
teachers who would at times go so far as to insult students unlucky enough to
land in their classrooms. Academia sliced its own wrists by severing its
ties with its life source, its students.

I have 12 years of secondary education and three degrees, yet can count the
teachers and professors I met who seemed truly dedicated to teaching and who
cared about every student on one hand. So this is not a new
phenomenon. And as a professor who did care about every student and did
my best to help them succeed, I was often mocked by other faculty and administrators. No surprise in a nation that most values star athletes and those we send to war, while griping about even having to pay teachers and public servants.

So let the online learning focus roll. A learning revolution is truly at
hand. It will promote a sustained tsunami of independent learning and
thinking. And shove aside the failures and disappointments so long
ignored by those basking in the artificial glory of once-revered academia.

Thank you Fred! My father was such a professor as you, devoted to students and pedagogy. I saw as a child, and later as a PhD student myself, how those who could dash off papers on hot topics with current lingo were celebrated as productive regardless of their abilities in the classroom, while those of us who liked to teach undergraduates were dismissed as dilettantes.

This article is attempting to fool us into accepting a false choice either by willfully not presenting or not understanding what knowledge is. It assumes the industry's frame of reference: it mistakes information for knowledge; it assumes a linear model of production, like producing broomsticks; that X number of hours in front of a TV produces Y, the expected and required change in viewers' brains that can be called knowledge. E&Y believe democratization of knowledge and access will be a driver of change. They really mean buying and selling information and the systems that distribute it. Reuters University; Bloomberg University is more their understanding of the culmination of the 'education' process.

Building a system that has as its purpose the discovery and dissemination of knowledge requires a completely different understanding of what knowledge is, how it is acquired, the environment required and the society that supports it, from the one envisioned by this article. It requires an appreciation of systems and self-organization (SO), "...the most marvelous characteristic of some complex systems to learn, diversify, complexify and evolve; the ability of a single fertilized ovum to generate, out of itself, the incredible complexity of a mature frog, or chicken, or person...self-organization is often sacrificed for purposes of short-term productivity or stability...the usual excuses for turning creative human beings into mechanical adjuncts to production processes...or establishing bureaucracies and theories of knowledge that treat people as if they were only numbers.

"SO produces heterogeneity and unpredictability. It is likely to come up with whole new structures, whole new ways of doing things. It requires freedom and experimentation, and a certain amount of disorder. These conditions that encourage SO often can be scary for individuals and threatening to power structures. As a consequence, education systems may restrict the creative powers of children [and adults] instead of stimulating those powers. Economic policies may lean toward supporting established, powerful enterprises rather than upstart, new ones. And many governments prefer their people not to be too self-organizing."--Donella Meadows in "Thinking in Systems, A Primer," p. 79-80.

MOOCs are another symptom of the advance of the conservative education cancer that left unchecked, will kill democracy.

We do have to define what knowledge is before we can construct the means by which it is acquired (if, indeed, it is acquired). If knowledge is something poured from one source (the knower) into another (the learner), then it is quite easy to build a bridge between the two, online or in the classroom. If it is something that is never complete, often changing, and put together by means of arguments, it is a difficult task, one seldom achieved even before the age of the internet. Socrates and his pupils may have come close. The best graduate departments in the best schools do quite well.

To my knowledge, online courses have so far not met the standard for this sort of education. I suspect it can only be conducted with a fairly small number of learners who are able to participate in inquiry as it is practiced by the best minds. I hope the internet can spread such an encounter of students and teachers, but I think it has a long way to go.

So true. And the built-in assumption in this newest "revolution" (read more privitazation of education) is that one size fits all just like high-stakes testing in primary, middle schooling, and high school. The hidden assumption is that "learning" will take place in isolation. For a few students, certainly not on this scale.

Sorry, "democratizing" education means exposing young people to the frontiers of knowledge in a step by step process from their earliest years in school. It means investing a large part of social wealth in this endeavor not the pittance in comparison to investments in "security", war, death. "Revolutions" in learning and knowledge come from asking questions. This means real professors in real classrooms in real communities. Not this professor in a box garbage that at best will provide the foundation for broad based indoctrination...

Amen. That's what we are about these days.

Technology has driven up the cost of higher education...

... and now this junk in the name of saving money!

Something stinks...

Did I miss something or was "standardization" totally omitted from the article?

While this is a good overview of the subject, there is an aspect of free online courses that doesn't get nearly enough attention, and that is that very few people actually finish these courses they take online. The completion rate is terrible. You can see this for yourself by going to iTunes University, which helpfully shows each individual class for a given course, and how many times it has been watched. For most classes, you get a bunch of views at first, then it trails off to insignificance very fast.

As someone who has designed online classes and even entire online degree programs I don't have any illusions that free online courses by themselves will revolutionize or revitalize the moribund university system. These classes become most effective when you have strong social environment supporting them; active forums, phone call follow-up or conference call discussions, chat rooms, close interaction with the instructor, etc. Otherwise they don't really work as advertised.

That said, they could become revolutionary if people interested in learning a particular subject or taking the same class got together, and took it together, perhaps with someone who already knows the subject. Small to medium-sized groups of learners and scholars and teachers both online and in real time putting their heads together to question and share and learn--that could start something a bit more revolutionary. In fact, the first European universities were exactly that.

Correction: I see that the author does refer to informal groups of peers, "community of inquiry" and so on. That's the key to making this work.

This is an incredibly comprehensive analysis of the pros and cons of MOOCS. There is little doubt that for-profit corporate colleges, such as Everest University, offer a second-rate education at best. But in the case of colleges such as Harvard, NYU, CalTech and others which have already or are considering merging forces for in-depth online education, it holds promise for the student who is already motivated to learn, and who has a goal in mind where he/she can find the course of study that would best enable him/her to reach that goal.

I am 87 years of age and have thoroughly enjoyed the opportunities I have to learn interesting and helpful information from the Internet, as well as having an encyclopedia right at hand. I believe this approach has the potential to provide quality educational opportunities to anyone who wishes it, but on the other hand, it can be terribly abused by those in it simply for the profits who care little about quality education.

Gee, and here when we watched Public Broadcasting for our science programs back many years ago, who could have guessed we were part of a MOOC.

The potential for distance education has been there for decades. It's a good thing, especially the possibilities for interactive student self-testing. Which, again, was available back in the dawn of time.

Schools will always have value as places where students work together on projects, share lab facilities, and get a chance to meet researchers. A lot of basic functions can be done over the Net. The time of educators can be focused on kids who need more help or just personal interaction.

Higher education has gotten way too expensive. That's the basic problem. We should all favor this being done right, and oppose it being done wrong. Extending the school day to international standards using distance education: good. Using distance education to break teacher unions: bad.

It's that simple.

Yeah, well almost all of those sites that were truly "free" and let anyone come and view course materials, are requiring a sign up now. They want an email, they want a real name, they want to keep records and forward them to the NSA, and probably highest bidders....

They're a joke, to little to late, and with the no-jobs economy, as well as only 47% of working aged Americans having FULL-TIME jobs, for the past few years......

Doesn't really matter, the economy is so interdependent even if you learned enough to be essentially a doctor in something.... Not only will your knowledge be UN-respected by corporations, you'd probably need a massive loan to go into business for yourself, and if your business relies on people being able to AFFORD your good or service.......

Very useful compendium of data, Michael. Thank you for the work.

I've been thinking along this line recently, and my BS degree. Talking to my wife who holds a BS in Nursing, I BS in Horticulture, we both have come to one conclusion, in our years we feel we learned about 10% of our knowledge as a result of discussions with fellow classmates, the professor/instructor, which were rooted in 'OUR STUPID QUESTIONS', such knowledge will NEVER COME FROM A COMPUTER SCREEN.
Mike Cassidy
Utica, Md.

10 % could probably be done without

Did you ever go to college yourself, i.e. 'BRICK and MORTAR' type?

excellent point!

A cost nobody seems to be addressing, both online and 'home-schooling' greatly inhibit the socialization process. Those countless tiny cues that provide tutelage in functioning in society, behaving around others, the association of cause and effect in human behavior do not occur in online interaction.

Another component of skilled teaching and institutional learning that will be missed is the role of teacher as mandatory reporter in cases of neglect/abuse. Yes, tiny as a percentage, but in the aggregate, many, many lives are spared much suffering.

The same with screening, the detection of things as minor as myopia are found out in the classroom, by educators.

This is so CRITICAL and yet so rarely mentioned as a loss. I know that reality is that people relate online and by texting mostly, but that is even more reason for them to have practice in building relationships during their education. I recently saw an MSW (social work) offered online. Holy crap! That's an education where RELATING is the key skill. What are we losing here?

There is no doubt that traditional universities, at least in the United States, are corrupt and in need of the most radical reform.

Not the least of their Fannie-Mae-like failings is the cynical abuse of adjunct and graduate-student labor, which ranges from the unfair and oppressive to the outrageous and intolerable.

Actually tenured university faculties, with all their high-toned, self-serving, and hypocritical drivel about intellectual freedom, bear an equal share of responsibility for these atrocious abuses with the super-rich "benefactors" of universities, the developers of university properties, and the despicable Nazi industry of college sport. Soaring tuition costs and unmanageable student debt loads are in large part a direct result of academic corruption, including the fundamental corruption of the tenured professoriate.

But the proliferation of both for-profit online education and allegedly free online education based on the work product of paid academics is nothing more or less than the turning of the corrupt academies on their faculty co-conspirators. These--who for decades have thrived, belching and farting and praising each other for the ineffable odor of their own alleged sanctity, on the sociopathic exploitation of graduate students and adjunct faculty and the profiteering of Boards of Overseers and real-estate parasites--are about to get a fatal taste of their own disgusting medicine.

Unfortunately, the rest of us will pay the price with them.

"Free" online institutions and worthless diploma mills like The University of Phoenix, Strayer University, and the rest of the online whoremonges, do not conduct research. They add nothing to the store of human knowledge. Nor do they teach or permit critical thinking or provide any version of that much-traduced but still all-important commodity, the intellectual community. They merely provide empty certifications to be used by unfree labor in seeking slave masters on the eternally declining job market. They help brainwash job candidates so that they can see no horizon beyond the job market. This legitimizes the very source of the problem: advanced capitalism.

Such operations are as parasitic on the legitimate colleges and universities--if those were only doing their jobs--as are cheap online tabloid sites like The Raw Story and the other Internet news recyclers on the legitimate news services and newspapers, which they are destroying like any so many flesh-eating bacteria.

The world needs proper universities, and, yes, even tenured professors--as much as it needs legitimate news organizations and what used to be called "the Press." The fact that the universities and the actual body of the tenured have for decades criminally, arrogantly, incessantly, and wantonly betrayed their sacred trust should not lead us to throwing out the baby of learning and inquiry with the bathwater of corruption.

There can be no reform of education without the prior radical restructuring of the economic and political system. This in turn cannot be completed without a bottoms-up scrub of the corrupt institutions of so-called higher learning. But whiz-bangs like both the "free" online universities and their for-profit counterparts cannot address this problem and will only blind people to its existence. Internet technology will always have its uses, but as the NSA scandals teach us, is a two-edged sword that can easily be turned against the interests of the people. In and of itself, it solves nothing and can easily destroy the expectations that it creates.

If you are taking delight in the decline of the university, then I am not with you. Universities are about far more than educating undergraduates: they are about modeling critical thinking; they are about treasuring sound conclusions derived after rigorous inquiry; they are about appreciating the enthusiasm of professors who are excited about the subjects they research; they are about providing decent jobs for well-educated persons; they are about asking questions about subjects that have no relevance to making money. Digital education serves masses of students of a certain type, but, for the most part, it does not address the points enumerated here. How could an online course truly mentor a young writer brought up in an impoverished neighborhood?

I couldn't have said it better. One more thing: There is no reason, I repeat, no reason for the enormous jumps in tuition in the past few years. Have professors suddenly seen a huge, or even incremental raise in pay? Has maintenance become extremely expensive?