I am a high school teacher, and I am quite happy to see the availability of some of these courses.<p>I have a student taking the Intermediate Web Development course from Udacity, and it has had a significant impact on this student. He is learning much more quickly than he could if I was directing his content, but he is still benefiting greatly from having me available to answer questions. To be honest, I am also learning by being exposed to some of what he is doing. For example, I have not used google app engine myself, but I am getting to see how gae compares to heroku, which I am more familiar with.<p>It is also a good introduction to some of what is expected of people in post-high school education. I definitely intend to steer more students towards some of these courses.
I have a big problem with edx and coursera courses. As I have a need to work a day job, sometimes rushed projects come in, and these two platforms are offering courses with tight schedules. It would be nice if they would adopt Udacity model, which is more loose. Also the same applies for 10gen education of mongodb which is also made into tight schedule.
I've just finished Udacity CS101 and am about to finish edX 6.00x (both are intro to cs courses).<p>I've done a lot of thought and research into MOOCs and normal CS bachelor's programs. Initially I was really excited about getting a CS BS for free, online. The savings would be about $40000 compared with going to my local state school.<p>But the luster soon dulled once I realized that it will be some time before Universities accept MOOC certificates as credit (or never). So my self-study CS degree is really nothing more than cracking open textbooks and watching youtube videos as far as an employer is concerned.<p>We're at a strange impasse where MOOCs are free but are limited by the weakness of being no-credit, and Universities are outrageously expensive but provide the value of being for-credit.<p>Up until a week ago I had signed up for 7 or 8 courses, excited to further my CS education. I've since decided to cancel them all. Coursera's Data Structures course doesn't even give you a certificate! Even if you ace the course you get nada. zip. zilch.<p>Sorry but that's just too much of a downside for me. If you're going to spend 10 hours a week for 3 months (what's that.. 100-120 hours) you might as well get credit for it. Sad but that's how this world works. Either University prices need to be cut in half or MOOC certificates need to count for something. Something has to give. Until then I will be wary about putting my time into MOOCs.<p>The good thing is that with the flood of students to MOOC education, employers will soon be forced to take note of the courses these MOOC students have taken. This change in attitude will take some time to effect - 10 years before significant attitude shift and then 20-30 years before a complete attitude shift.<p>I'd rather not wait that long, but I may not have a choice, like many other people. The strange thing is that it's rational to eschew university and study MOOCs, but it's also rational to bite the high university tuition costs and get the degree. It's a very, very interesting time for education.
For anyone on HN, a more fitting title would probably be "Everything You Already Know About Massive Online Open Courses" -- the info is pretty basic.<p>The most interesting part was the article linked at the top of their timeline: "The False Promise of the Education Revolution" <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/The-False-Promise-of-the/136305/" rel="nofollow">http://chronicle.com/article/The-False-Promise-of-the/136305...</a>
University is not about learning. Learning tends to be a means to an end to most people who attend. The end being networking and a diploma. People cheat all the time to get ahead in University, this is antithetical to learning.<p>MOOCs are great learning tools. However, they generally don't provide you with networking or a diploma. You can cheat doing an online, not-for-credit course, but that undermines the only benefit you get from it.<p>I personally think that they are great, because I can afford to value learning more than certification. However, if what you are looking for is a way to prove you're an ideal employee, I don't know if they can ever take the place of the social benefits of a flesh-based university.<p>I think that the discrepancy comes from the idea that University student's goal is to learn, and a University's goal is to teach. It's not. A student's goal is to get a degree and meet smart people (while learning). A University's goal is to make relationships with smart and influential people and secure funding (while teaching). The quality of teaching is a measure of prestige which attracts the smart and influential people: The cost of tuition is a filter to try and discourage any but the wealthiest (this more influential) students. The existence of scholarships are to make exceptions for the smartest students.<p>If you want to simply learn a subject, you have a lot of opportunities outside of a University degree structure. Auditing courses, Online courses, Self-study, work experience, non-university teaching, etc. But if you were to ask a typical university student if they would give up the possibility of earning a bachelor's degree, however they could go to school and not pay tuition but not be allowed to use University facilities outside of attending lectures, I'd wager most would turn you down.
In my view, MOOCs are really revolutionizing education because they provide options for smart willing people that are locationally or financially disadvantaged to learn from top tier professors/institutions.
I've been using MOOCs to supplement my coursework for over a year now. Here's my experience <a href="http://datagrad.blogspot.com/2012/11/using-moocs-while-in-grad-school.html?m=1" rel="nofollow">http://datagrad.blogspot.com/2012/11/using-moocs-while-in-gr...</a>
Slightly off topic - sorry.<p>Whoever coined the acronym MOOC is clearly not from the NYC area or has not heard the term "mook", which is all I see when I read this article.<p><a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=mook" rel="nofollow">http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=mook</a><p>This is an acronym that should be killed quickly.<p>Maybe something like MMOE (Massive Multiuser Online Education)? Or MOOE (Massive Open Online Education) or OEOE (Open Enrollment Online Education)....
I'm in my third year as an undergrad at Yale. I have to say, all the talk of MOOCs "disrupting higher education" is a bit misleading. Top universities are not going anywhere, nor is their prestige. If that were the case, why would MIT/Harvard/Stanford/Yale publish their courses in this manner? They wouldn't.<p>The reason top universities are not only willing to publicly release their courses, but <i>competing</i> with each other to do so, is simple. The mission of these universities is to educate. Publishing courses as MOOCs accomplishes enables that mission. It also has the added benefit of creating publicity for the school.<p>To say that MOOCs are "disrupting higher education" implies that the universities are commoditizing their education. They are not. They are commoditizing the <i>academic</i> portion of their education. In my experience at Yale, the academic portion of my education has accounted for no more than 10% of it. Academics are not what universities are in the business of teaching. That's why you can't replace a university education with a set of online courses.<p>My daily life consists of no more than 2 hours of class. Yet I wake up at 9 and go to bed at 12. That's 13/15 hours in the day NOT spent in class. During that time is when I'm reaping the benefits of a Yale education. They are largely intangible, but very obvious in retrospect. They are skills for navigating through life. Yale teaches you strong social skills, encourages you to step outside your comfort zone, introduces you to what can only be described as an absurd network of people, and how to manage all of that in the course of a day. I've learned more about myself the past three years than I ever could have through online courses. And THAT is why MOOCs will never disrupt the traditional higher education system.
There is something very interesting to me about the rise of these courses. Everyone I've heard is expecting the jobs of the future to require higher order thinking skills: creativity, analytics, etc. Another way to put it would be thing that are on the higher end of [Bloom's Taxonomy](<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blooms_Taxonomy" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blooms_Taxonomy</a>)<p>On the other hand, these courses are aimed at the opposite end of the taxonomy: remembering, recalling, etc. There are a few conclusions I can draw from this:<p>1) There is an upper limit on the possible effectiveness of purely technology driven education.<p>2) That ceiling will remain in place until there is an proven method of scaling up assessment of creativity and other higher order skills.<p>3) If you can solve 2, you're going to be very, very rich.
I really like how The Chronicle has organized this web page about MOOCs by (a) using the timeline as the central way of ordering content and (b) providing an overview/FAQ about MOOCs on the left.
For my parents' generation, the way you showed ambition and competence at work was, after you finished your assigned stuff, to go to your boss and ask for more. If you were good, you were always asking for more things to do. This was inefficient, because it usually meant you were putting 100% CPU into grunt work for 4 years, and if the company turned on you and fired you mid-climb, you would have gained no real skills in that time.<p>Ambitious people don't do that anymore. They don't give their surplus time back to the boss and ask for more work. It's the mediocre, clueless ones who do that. The ambitious people use surplus time to learn the skills that will help them advance. Having a Library of Alexandria at every desk means that ambitious people can get a high-quality education and no one has to know.<p>I don't believe that MOOCs will obsolete the traditional liberal arts education, which is about a lot more than lecture, but MOOCs are another step, and a powerful one, in bringing through this transition in the workplace. More on this: <a href="http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/12/07/moocs-disrupting-work/" rel="nofollow">http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/12/07/moocs-disrupt...</a>