Re: How revolutionary are MOOCs and their spin-offs? Some tentative predictions #change11 #opco12

Markus Deimann, May 23, 2012

Thank you very much for your comment and your thoughts in this discussion.

I think I need to clarify my point a bit more. It seems that you have made some wonderful experiences with MOOCs and I agree with you that this could not have been happened in traditional learning contexts. However, I doubt that your experiences can be generalized because of the overall openness and the fragmented structure of a MOOC. I think that it heavily depends on personal skills and attitudes to determine whether a a MOOC can be beneficial. But I do not think that we can assume that every learner has this set of skills. Instead I think that we need to help and guide learners to acquire them and to prepare them for the "adventure" MOOC.

I like your picture of the teacher loosing the remote control but for me this also implies some severe consequences. What if a learners only wants to see the "Discovery Channel" and refuses to watch political and economical programs? In your argument, you would take this a given thing, i.e., let's have it as that. But don't you think that we should have some minimal exposure to "unpopular" topics? I do. This is what I mean with a general introduction in the sense of liberal arts or general studies.

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