Dive Summary:
- The New York Times begins a new series of stories on massive open online courses (MOOCs) by looking at the case of Mitchell Duneier, a Princeton professor who transitioned to teaching "Introduction to Sociology" on Coursera.
- Peter McPherson, the president of the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, says that universities are at a tipping point where everyone will need to have an online strategy.
- The article also points out that even Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, has signed up for a MOOC on poetry.
From the article:
"... Moreover, these massive open online courses, or MOOCs, harness the power of their huge enrollments to teach in new ways, applying crowd-sourcing technology to discussion forums and grading and enabling professors to use online lectures and reserve on-campus class time for interaction with students.
The spread of MOOCs is likely to have wide fallout. Lower-tier colleges, already facing resistance over high tuition, may have trouble convincing students that their courses are worth the price. And some experts voice reservations about how online learning can be assessed and warn of the potential for cheating. ..."