Herbert London, who is President of the London Center for Policy Research, has
written attacking my department's open letter critical of MOOCs. He writes
"In every instance where rejection of on-line courses occurred,
professors bent over backwards to assert they don’t oppose on-line
technology, only the collaboration “with an outside vendor that might
pose a threat…to their principles... That appears to be a
rationalization. In frank discussion, professors invariably raise the
issue of replacement and the dismantling of departments."
So London assumes that if you are concerned about replacement and dismantling of departments any concern about collaboration with outside vendors posing a threat to principles is a mere rationalization. Yet, clearly one can both be concerned about dismantling departments, the use of outside vendors, and violation of principles. London must assume that college professors only have economic self-interest as a motive. This is simply not true, and I base this judgment on many years of interacting with college professors as colleagues.
London goes on by evoking the horse replaced by tractors analogy:
"In some sense, however, this resistance [by SJSU Philosophy faculty and others] is comparable metaphorically the
way horses reacted to the tractor. Horses become anachronistic the day
tractors were used to plow the fields. One could argue that there isn’t a
need for the duplication of so many professors across the higher
education landscape now that a technology can provide a quality offering
to thousands in different locations and with vastly different
schedule."
I don't know how horses reacted to the tractor and I doubt that London does either. But, seriously, are MOOCs technological devices similar culturally and historically to tractors in the industrial revolution? Let's be really serious. MOOCs are just collections of video tapes and multiple choice quizzes delivered online. They do not involve any significant new technology. They are just educational packages or products that current technology allows for. In a sense they are modern-day correspondence courses.
The real question is whether MOOCs do the same job better and more efficiently than professors in the same way that tractors did the same job better and more efficiently than horses. The "same job" would be, for example, teaching freshmen and sophomores how to think, read and write critically and creatively. Wait, MOOCs involve no real writing assessment. (Don't tell me that there is assessment by other students. Parents: would you want your college-age child's writing to be assessed by other equally clueless college-age children?) Wait, MOOCs discourage actual reading since they are mainly devoted to having students watch hours of video-clips of famous professors talking on stage. Wait, MOOCs do not encourage critical thinking because they rely on multiple-choice exams in which students are supposed to parrot the "correct" answer. Wait, MOOCs do not encourage creative thinking. Sounds like MOOCs do not do the same job at all, and they certainly do not do it more efficiently. Rather they do something completely different.
London insists that MOOCs "can provide a quality offering
to thousands." This conclusion is based on a serious equivocation. I agree that Prof. Sandel's lectures that are currently provided for free on PBS are of high quality. I have enjoyed watching them, and as far as TV entertainment goes, they are to be admired. EdX provides a MOOC that includes Sandel's lectures, and students can take this MOOC for a price and also may get credit for it someplace (though, I am proud to say, not from my department!). But is this MOOC a "quality offering" as a class? Well, again,there is an ambiguity. I do not doubt that many people who will take the EdX class will get some value from doing so. Maybe they will be turned on to philosophy! So much to the good. Many people also have the skills and ability to learn more from using books that are readily available in a library or online and through reading on their own rather than from participating in a live or normal-sized online class. However, make no mistake, the students who are taking the EdX class are not getting the same quality offering they would get if they were taking a forty-student class from Prof. Sandel or from any other philosopher who is well versed in theory of justice. I picked "forty" since the classes MOOCs seek to replace (for example in my department) are, at our university at least, typically that size or smaller. (Our equivalent class has a typical size of fifteen...that's seminar-sized.) I recognize that Sandel himself lectures to hundreds at Harvard, but note also that he has TAs who are Phd candidates and will discuss the issues with students in small groups. Those Phd candidates are themselves well-versed in the discipline. This kind of quality interaction does not, cannot, happen for MOOCers except by chance (say a really knowledgeable person decides to help you out for free in the chat-room) .
So, yes, there is quality in there somewhere, but it is delusional to think that Sandel's MOOC provides a tractor-like replacement for horse-like professors. The professors at my institution, unlike MOOC professors, actually grade papers and interact with their students.
