By Azer Bestavros
MOOC Ambivalence at Harvard
Ambivalence about MOOCs, which has increasingly been voiced on campuses across the country, is also being heard among faculty members at Harvard University.
Harvard Reflects on MOOCs
Even at Harvard University, which has been a leading promoter of massive open online courses, some faculty members are raising questions (but mostly about whether Harvard edX courses could be used by other students in a way that threatens the value of face-to-face education).
Yale joins Coursera
Yale announced that it would soon offer MOOCs through Coursera, the Silicon Valley-based company. Yale plans to offer four courses beginning in January, focusing on constitutional law, financial markets, morality, and Roman architecture.
Business Education Revolution?
Online educational technology offers opportunities rather than threats. And research on the effects of disruptive innovation – for example in newspapers – has also shown that established players who treat the arrival of a new technology as an opportunity, rather than as direct substitute, are the ones that are most likely to survive and prosper.
Beyond MOOCs
The Academic Journey: Beyond MOOCS More
The MOOC Controversy
It's been less than three years since MOOCs entered the public discourse, but the online classes are already causing quite a stir in the higher education universe as elite universities such as Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan—Ann Arbor embrace the courses.
Colleges and universities don't typically accept MOOCs for credit, unless they are associated with their own programs. However, experts predict that will change in coming years as institutions feel pressure from their peers and students to accept the classes.
MOOCs and Incumbents
These kind of changes, where incumbent providers sneer about inferior products while the new technology serves new markets, are important. That's basically been the story of journalism and technology over the past 15 years, and it's been change for the better.
GaTech offers Online MS
Starting in the fall, the Georgia Institute of Technology, together with AT&T and Udacity, an online education venture, will offer a master’s degree in computer science that can be earned entirely through so-called massive open online courses, or MOOCs. While the courses would be available free online to the general public, students seeking the degree would have to have a bachelor’s degree in computer science, and pay tuition that is expected to be less than $7,000 Initially, the program will be limited to a few hundred students from AT&T and Georgia Tech corporate affiliates, but enrollment is then expected to expand in the fall of 2014.
GaTech+AT&T+Udacity=Online MS
A Top Ten master’s degree in computer science at a very affordable cost from Georgia Tech (in collaboration with Udacity and AT&T)...
