The MOOC revolution that never happened

The Conversation 18 July 2014

It is two years since Coursera began offering massive open online courses, or MOOCs, that threatened the very existence of universities and the increasingly expensive education they offered. Two years on, the avalanche-tsunami-revolution never came and universities are not only still standing, they have, by-and-large, been remarkably unaffected by the free courses now offered by a couple of hundred universities around the world, writes David Glance for The Conversation.

Arguably MOOCs have spurred a renewed interest in using what is called a ‘blended learning’ approach to university courses, offering students a mix of online and face-to-face tuition. But beyond this, one can argue that MOOCs have had limited impact on the day-to-day business of universities.

The logic of why MOOCs presented such a threat to the existing higher educational model was reasonably sound. Faced with an option of quality courses that were free, why would people continue to saddle themselves with, what in some cases is a lifetime of debt, to take courses from second or third-tier universities and colleges? Well, it turned out that free has consequences.
Full report on The Conversation site

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