by ALVA NOË, National Public Radio
Colleges and universities are communities with their own local cultures, values and ways of doing things. In the face of budgetary pressure, how will these communities withstand the temptation to give up the hard work of making knowledge and, instead, just subscribe to courses being produced and packaged elsewhere? One might object that MOOCs are no different from textbooks. What is a textbook, really, but a programmed course template, a whole course in a box? Have popular textbooks destroyed local learning communities and entrenched established hierarchies? No. This is an important point and it brings out how complicated the issues are. So often with new technology we simply reenact old battles. But maybe the comparison with textbooks breaks down. Textbooks are limited in ambition. They don’t replace the whole curriculum; they give it a grounding. Good teachers use textbooks. Will they come to use MOOCs the same way?
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