Almost overnight, massive open online courses (MOOCs)
went from idea stage to being the next big thing in higher education. While Sebastian
Thrun’s first MOOC attracted an impressive 160,000 students in 2011, interest
grew to 35 million individuals who signed up for at least one of the free
online courses in 2015.
The blemish on the success story has always been
completion rates, but MOOC providers also have had to show they are worth the
investment. That pressure has led MOOC platforms to shift emphasis to job
training and charging students for credentials.
That’s troubling to author Jonathon Keats, who
suggested in a column for Wired that the real goal of MOOCs should be to interest people in
everything.
“The technology underlying MOOCs—as well as their
reach—provides a solid platform for broadening people’s interests,” Keats
wrote. “MOOCs need to be linked across disciplines, with recommendation engines
like those employed by Netflix and YouTube to entice students to compulsively
take up new interests. Completion rates need to be de-emphasized in favor of
curiosity quotients.
“Vocation
training is just one thin layer of education,” he added. “For edutech to be
worthy of its name—and for everything to truly change—MOOC platforms need to
make every mind as expansive as the World Wide Web.”
