I think MOOCs do serve a purpose, and there is a market out there for it. But if anyone thought they would disrupt the education industry are only betraying their own lack of understanding about what education means.
My 4 years of experience as a teacher thought me that education is as much about managing student behavior as it is about transferring knowledge. Students learn by what they think and what they do, and only by what they think and what they do, and not by "knowledge transfer" or "osmosis". The job of a good educator is then to create structure and incentives to foster thinking and doing.
At the beginning of my teaching career, I was of the opinion that if only more teachers actually cared about teaching, the overall education quality would improve. But now, I am convinced that caring comes more close to being a necessary condition than being sufficient.
Even though I think there is a significant room for improvement, Universities in general offer structure, community, in-person interactions, and other social aspects which MOOCs don't come anywhere close to offering.
That being said, I think Universities are due for a disruption. The landscape of education is changing. With increased automation, meaningful well-paying jobs are becoming much more sophisticated and demand for higher education is increasing rapidly. Universities are extremely inefficient, and as such, are not equipped to address this growing demand at a reasonable cost. Universities are due for a disruption.
My 4 years of experience as a teacher thought me that education is as much about managing student behavior as it is about transferring knowledge. Students learn by what they think and what they do, and only by what they think and what they do, and not by "knowledge transfer" or "osmosis". The job of a good educator is then to create structure and incentives to foster thinking and doing.
At the beginning of my teaching career, I was of the opinion that if only more teachers actually cared about teaching, the overall education quality would improve. But now, I am convinced that caring comes more close to being a necessary condition than being sufficient.
Even though I think there is a significant room for improvement, Universities in general offer structure, community, in-person interactions, and other social aspects which MOOCs don't come anywhere close to offering.
That being said, I think Universities are due for a disruption. The landscape of education is changing. With increased automation, meaningful well-paying jobs are becoming much more sophisticated and demand for higher education is increasing rapidly. Universities are extremely inefficient, and as such, are not equipped to address this growing demand at a reasonable cost. Universities are due for a disruption.
