In today’s New York Times, Thomas Friedman writes: I can see a day soon where you’ll create your own college degree by taking the best online courses from the best professors from around the world. The column, which seems to be more PR for Coursera than legitimate commentary on education, comes a day before a group…
The movement toward presenting core curricula through MOOCs delivered by outside providers will continue unabated until some basic questions are answered. What is the maximum number of students who can take a MOOC before the scale becomes preposterous: 30,000–300,000–3,000,000? How do digital videos of classes avoid the pedagogical issues inherent to large lecture classes, issues…