From Hong Kong to the world:
Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have largely been an American innovation thus far. Europe has one or two small programs, but in Asia there are none at all—until now, that is.
University World News reports that the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) is now offering a class through Coursera, making it the first Asian school to offer its own MOOC coursework. “Society, Technology and Culture in China” is taught in English, and the majority of its 17,000 students are located in the West. Two more Asian universities are planning to follow HKUST’s lead, and Coursera is looking to develop a Chinese-language platform linked to universities in Taiwan and Hong Kong as part of what appears to be a serious push to gain a foothold in the growing Chinese market.
Here's an interesting opinion piece in Harvard Business Review. A bit of it as the Quote of the Day:
I think what's going on in my home industry of higher education at present is something between a bubble and a scandal. And I don't think it'll change unless and until employers shift, and start valuing signals other than college degrees.
Here's the announcement from December 2011, and here is the website for the free courses. Thanks, MIT! Here's a nice quote from MIT President Susan Hockfield:
“MIT has long believed that anyone in the world with the motivation and ability to engage MIT coursework should have the opportunity to attain the best MIT-based educational experience that Internet technology enables. OpenCourseWare’s great success signals high demand for MIT’s course content and propels us to advance beyond making content available. MIT now aspires to develop new approaches to online teaching.”
The changing face of education. Still, there is no substitute for a real, live human being as a great teacher-mentor. Of course, I've had a few duds along the way whom I would have gladly replaced with an app!
Because we're all screwed? Still, say what you want, but there is no substitute for real live teachers investing in and mentoring their students while teaching things worth knowing. If you really want to save higher ed, you should begin by (a) slashing the ranks of edu-crats, admin, and nerd-bureaucrats, and (b) telling government to butt out on all levels.
Well, OK, but almost all the professors I know teach like mad, are devoted to their work and their students, and don't have a bunch of time to take on still more teaching duties. They're all running around frantically already among teaching, research, campus duties, and real life at home. I'm not sure what kind of professors Professor Vedder is actually talking about -- celebrity older folks who think they're too posh now to teach mere undergrads? I think we should first go cut back the armies of edu-crats and trim ridiculous bureaucracy!
I had previously posted on Khan Academy's cool online lessons on science and math. I still think they're fun introductions to those concepts, and their accessibility is great. I don't, though, recommend Khan's history lessons, what few he has, because it's really hard to do justice to the vast complexities of history with 10-15-minute-long video overviews. History is fundamentally different from quantitative subjects like physics and math. Now the National Association of Scholars has an article about just that very thing. Do read. For the record, I am not a fan of the "Big History" approach because it sounds as though the actual, particular details of history become subsumed into whatever thematic idea is being "taught" at the moment -- too streamlined, too pretty, too reductive, too prone to skipping things and glossing over others, too open to the deadly possibility of ignoring counter-examples and important outliers.
Autodidacts, rejoice! Currently the lessons are mostly on math and science ... but, oh how fun! Their stated goal is to create the world's first completely free virtual school.
Now I can't help myself. I simply must imagine this exchange:
Q: Where do you go to school?
A: Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!
