Sebastian Thrun,
founder of the massive open online course (MOOC) provider Udacity, recently
organized a discussion on the future of higher education and how technology
fits in. The conference produced a document, called “A Bill of Rights and
Principles for Learning in the Digital Age” that provides a framework to
protect the interests of online students.
The document lists the “rights” online students
should demand of institutions and companies offering online courses and
technology tools. The list includes the right to learn, to privacy, to create
public knowledge, and to own personal data and intellectual property. The
document also sets out a list of principles that online learning should try to
achieve, including value, flexibility, innovation, experimentation, and play.
“The idea is to
have a larger conversation about this so that MOOCs don’t become the Facebook
or Instagram of higher education—where you sign up for some free service and it
turns out that you’re the product being sold,” said Cathy Davidson, an English
professor at Duke University who helped write the text.
The authors hope
it will become the framework to guide schools on using online tools and
platforms, but it’s not without critics. One issue is that no online students
took part in the discussion.
“If the result
is a big conversation that gets people engaged and involved, including
self-learners, then it’s a success,” said Philipp Schmidt, co-founder of the
open-education site Peer 2 Peer University and one of the authors of the Bill
of Rights, to Inside Higher Education. “This is not intended to be anything
remotely like a final version.”
