Articles
The MOOC Model: Challenging Traditional Education
Say what? A MOOC?
A MOOC (massive open online course) is a type of online course aimed at large-scale participation and open access via the web. MOOCs are a recent development in the area of distance education and a progression of the kind of open education ideals suggested by open educational resources.
MOOCs represent the latest stage in the evolution of open educational resources. First was open access to course content, and then access to free online courses. Accredited institutions are now accepting MOOCs as well as free courses and experiential learning as partial credit toward a degree. The next disruptor will likely mark a tipping point: an entirely free online curriculum leading to a degree from an accredited institution. With this new business model, students might still have to pay to certify their credentials, but not for the process leading to their acquisition. If free access to a degree-granting curriculum were to occur, the business model of higher education would dramatically and irreversibly change. As Nathan Harden ominously noted, "recent history shows us that the internet is a great destroyer of any traditional business that relies on the sale of information."
Colleges have a problem here: the way in which the core services of education are rendered is changing, but the underlying business model is not. This widening disconnect threatens not only the financial viability of traditional campuses following the "Law of More,"2 but, more fundamentally, their rationale.
A number of converging trends pose a challenge to brick-and-mortar institutions:
- the emergence of the learning sciences and their application to educational practice,
- the movement toward competency-based education, and
- new business models that effectively combine instructional quality, lower cost, and increased access through unlimited scalability (MOOCs).
A turning point will occur when a MOOC-based program of study leads to a degree from an accredited institution. Indeed, we are already partially there: students can now receive transfer credit toward a degree from an accredited institution for learning not obtained at a college or university.
James G. Mazoue's entire article as posted on EDUCAUSE Review Online on January 28 2013, can be found here.