If my own humble institution were to start offering credit for MOOCs, it would doubtless do so under our Credit for Prior Learning policy. Let’s say a participant in “A History of the World since 1300″ winds up learning enough to qualify for credit under our CPL policy. Are we supposed to tell this student, “Sorry, kid, no credit for you, because even though you clearly know the material, you learned it from a MOOC with a credit exclusion”?

That seems neither sensible nor fair. Furthermore, how would the person charged with evaluating the CPL application even know whether there was such an exclusion in the first place? We certainly can’t rely on the student to tell us. It wouldn’t be in the student’s best interest to tell us, and anyway how many students would even read, much less remember, that kind of fine print? So, should Adams State University be keeping a list of which MOOCs can be used for credit and which cannot? I suppose we could do that, though it might prove difficult. (It would certainly be easier if it were the MOOC-provider’s responsibility to notify colleges about credit exclusions, rather than the responsibility of colleges to research the question themselves.)

Suppose that ASU were to go ahead and approve credit for a student who took “A History of the World since 1300.” Whether this happens with or without our knowledge of the credit exclusion, what exactly would be done about it? Is Princeton going to sue Adams State University? If so, on what grounds? Is there a law preventing us from giving the credit? Not that I know of. Is our accreditor going to come down on us? I doubt it. (Accrediting agencies are pretty much always the last to get up to speed on new developments like this.)

Note that the student might have made an agreement with Princeton not to seek credit for the MOOC, but ASU is under no comparable obligation not to grant such credit. So, would Princeton sue the student? What great publicity THAT would be! I really doubt it would happen. I’m thinking that Princeton can no more prevent its MOOCs from being used for credit than Netflix can prevent me from using a DVD in my classroom.

All of which is to say that MOOCs might have some or all the deleterious educational effects that Jonathan keeps harping on (automation, deskilling, the lowering of standards and outcomes, the diffusion of inferior pedagogy, the eventual immiseration of the professoriate), regardless of the spirit in which they are offered.

So on-line learning should be prepared to spend about 15 times as much per hour as face to face. But the student numbers are a thousand times as great or more!

Whatever recent commentators such as Alex Tabarrok have argued–from an economic rather than educational perspective–the online model is impoverished–and especially if it relies on the “lecture” model.

[I seem to have come up against a commenting word-limit. The argument continues at http://recentreflection.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/on-returning-to-mooc.html ...]

I promise I’ll give the forums one more try. The problem is that Thanksgiving is likely to leave me a week behind on lectures. Thank goodness my paper is already in.

So Princeton has a clause in its Coursera contract that explicitly prevents the company from allowing other schools to use its courses for credit? Not that I’m an expert on these things, but that would be news in some circles.

On this lecture thing, let me see if I can bring some more-qualified people to bear on the problem. New post pending…

Maybe I am thick or something, but I don’t follow your logic. I know exactly how my course is being used. We/I have explicitly forbidden anyone from using our course for any credit. I realize that Princeton is a loner on this — but it was a principle of my participating. We also have so little need for brand extension that to infer this a big driver means one cannot understand the spirit with which we/I have plunged into this, which is to improve my teaching at home and if possible create social knowledge. Again, I am quite aware that many universities have financial reasons. Indeed, this is quite possibly the dominant reason for the onrush. But if we can’t articulate alternative, compelling reasons why, and thus defend and uphold standards of online learning, the finances will be the only reason. This is why I keep repeating that we need to be open to the counterpoint reasons.

Interestingly, today at the meeting among the five faculty members at Princeton who have done/are doing these courses (did you see Mitch Duneier’s course features this am in the NYT?), I told them about your blog. I also mentioned that you thought I was doing a poor job shifting my teaching to the format. They too were all interested in what you mean about being overly content-driven. Of course, most of them are applied scientists so they understand that students learn, say computer programming, by following tasks of applied math or problem sets. But they too were a bit stymied about how one might do this in a humanities course.

The taxonomy on the link you sent is helpful, but still does not address the lecture.

The forums have been important sites. I haven’t seen you there. It’s hard, though, to cycle back into the lecture from the more spontaneous conversations since the lectures require so much advance planning. Something I will think about for v.2.0.

It doesn’t matter whether Princeton will give credit for its MOOCs or not. Other colleges will give credit for the certificates as long as they are willing to give Coursera a cut of what that student ends up paying for the whole degree. For Princeton it may be brand extension, but for the rest of us it is literally a matter of life or death. I think you have a responsibility to understand exactly how your course is being used.

On thinking outside the box, as I am a committed non-super professor this is a little over my head . You might start here:

http://lisahistory.net/wordpress/2012/08/three-kinds-of-moocs/

Anybody else out there have any suggestions?

I don’t think this is because Coursera wants speed, though certainly Coursera wants this in a big way, and for reasons that have nothing to do with my or Princeton’s objectives. This is because, I think, I have been very conventional about “the lecture.” Can you give me some specific models of courses I might look at to help me think outside the box?

Thanks!

I’m stuck w/ just my phone for the day. Otherwise I’d throw some links into this. So I’ll do my best to clarify on a small keyboard.

When I carp about the lecture format, I’m not complaining about the lectures. I’m complaining about the format. As I understand it, there are different kinds of MOOCs. Yours is almost exclusively content-driven. It didn’t need to be. For example, the forums could have been better integrated into the course so that a slacker like me had to go to them to pass. Instead, I can passively absorb stuff on video and do just fine. I suspect this is a function of Coursera’s desire for speed (in putting up courses) and massiveness. Different levels of engagement for different folks. Other folks have ben doing much more to reinvent what a course is in this format. I’m not sure I approve of that either but I give them credit for thinking outside the box.

So, like that woman you met in the dry cleaning place a few weeks ago, I think your lectures lose something coming through the computer screen. But I don’t think it’s your lectures that’s the problem. I think it’s the computer screen.

Actually, the problem I had with Assignment 4 was the messed up deadlines.

Jonathan, you allude to my lectures not being suited to the online, video format. Can you elaborate, specifically do you have pointers on what I might do differently to capture whatever benefits the recording might have?

One item that I have worried about are the lengths of some of the lecture segments, which seem too long. But then history sometimes takes a while to unspool, unlike applied science which is more naturally staged/sequenced.