hakesedstuff | ABSTRACT: My discussion-list post “Evaluating the Effectiveness of College” at http://yhoo.it/16cJ7HO concerned the failure of U.S. higher education to emphasize student learning rather than the delivery of instruction [Barr and Tagg (1995)] at http://bit.ly/8XGJPc. In response, a correspondent asked me “Is There Some Hope In Coursera’s Pedagogical Foundations? ”
Despite the serious cracks detected in all but one of Coursera’s five
pedagogical foundation stones, I don’t think Coursera is necessarily
doomed to pedagogic collapse. Instead I think there may actually be some
hope IF its MOOCs are evaluated by measurement of pre-to-post-course
student learning gains using Concept Inventories http://bit.ly/dARkDY.
If the physics education reform effort is any guide, then (a) such
assessment will demonstrate that MOOCs are actually MOORFAPs (Massive
Open Online Repetitions of FAiled Pedagogy), and (b) there will be some
incentive to transform MOOCs into MOOLOs (Massive Open Online Learning
Opportunities).
But even if MOOCs fail to become MOOLOs there still may be some hope since, as Keith Devlin (2013) points out at http://bit.ly/14440kt,
MOOCs have the potential to uncover individuals world-wide who have the
talent to learn from MOORFAPs, in the same way that most current
professional physicists were able to learn physics from FAPs (Failed
Academic Pedagogy).
For those who may wish to dig deeper into the MOOC milieu I recommend
Nathan Heller’s (2013) scholarly “LAPTOP U: Has the future of college
moved online?” at http://nyr.kr/10MmItb
