Monthly Archive: May 2013

Note – I realize that using the term “hillbilly” might strike some as insensitive and some as rude. I apologize for that. The fact is that it has a strong relationship to the notion of “rural” and “backwards” and, in comparison with the other MOOC programs I want to discuss, it is appropriate. So yes, I am taking some editorial/artistic license in the name of a better “hook” of a title. I’ll change it if anyone speaks up.

Massive Online Open Courses – or MOOCs – have been basically THE topic of the past couple of years. Whether it’s a company – Khan Academy – or part of a university – HarvardX – the creation and delivery of these courses has taken on a decidedly formal manner. There are offices devoted to helping design and deliver these programs, with dedicated staff. They have reached a level of maturity that, for instance, faculty whose curriculum have become part of the HarvardX program have written a formal letter asking for more oversight on the program itself. Faculty are injecting themselves into the program. Which means they are taking the impact of MOOCs on the larger issue of education and Harvard’s educational “brand” quite seriously. Which is a big deal.

For small institutions, though, delivering content online can be quite challenging. At Menlo College, for example, which is a very small college – 700 students – the first question is about getting something online. Not an entire courses. A MOOC is so far down the line that while it might be on the horizon, we’re still far enough away that we’re not sure if the world is flat or not. Perhaps we’ll fall off the edge of the world before we get to the MOOC implementation.

Lately, I’ve been contemplating how we might build a program overtime that would lead to an effective implementation of online course materials in a hybrid and/or “flipped” (rather broad description from Wikipedia) environment that could, in theory, eventually lead to acceptance and creation of effective MOOC-style curriculum. Since we don’t have an academic computing/educational technology program right now, this is an important issue for me and for Menlo. Is this a topic we wish to address as we build a program from scratch? If I had to pick, say, 5 low-cost, low-overhead, high-impact solutions, would any of them be the building blocks of online content delivery? Or should any of them be, with an eye towards that horizon?  One always wants to make tactical moves that align with strategic goals but is there enough clarity?

One thing we know is that the MOOC model is not going away.  From a purely business perspective, it is just too compelling to ignore. Right now the “open” part of the MOOC acronym suggests that profit should not be a factor at all. But at some point people will want to make money on any venture, and the notion of being able to deliver one set of content to 100, 200, 300 or any number of students in a ridiculously scalable model (single delivery system, single assessment model, etc – all scalable) is just too compelling and enticing. So MOOCs are here to stay. If you reel in the “ideal” that underlays MOOCs just a bit, courses delivered entirely online are equally obvious. They might not be massive and not as scalable (depending on implementation), but they are still very compelling. So, from a strategic planning perspective, I guess we do need to build up to a significant online presence for our curriculum.

For us, where we are starting from the ground up and with no staff dedicated to this purpose, we have to take this one step at a time. (more…)