Where have the MOOCs gone?

I was reading the latest (February 9/2017) issue of the NYR and the lead article is a review of The revenge of the analog (by David Sax). The reviewer is Bill McKibben and it discusses a mini revolt against the digital world that is apparently taking place. I have no personal experience of this, but the article is a fun read (here). There is one point that it makes that I found interesting and comports with my own impression. It's that MOOCs have disappeared.  There was a time when that's all that we heard about, at least in academia. How MOOCs would soon displace all standard teaching and that everyone had to find a way of translating their courses into web accessible/MOOC form or they would be left far behind, the detritus of the forward march of pedagogy. This coincided with the view that education would be saved if only every student could be equipped with a tablet that would serve as conduit to the endless world of information out there. MOOCs were the leading edge of a technological revolution that would revamp our conception of education at all levels beyond recognition.

I was very skeptical of this at the time (see, e.g. here and here). Sax tries to explain what went wrong.  Here's McKibben on Sax.

The notion of imagination and human connection as analog virtues comes across most powerfully in Sax’s discussion of education. Nothing has appealed to digital zealots as much as the idea of “transforming” our education systems with all manner of gadgetry. The “ed tech” market swells constantly, as more school systems hand out iPads or virtual-reality goggles; one of the earliest noble causes of the digerati was the One Laptop Per Child global initiative, led by MIT’s Nicholas Negroponte, a Garibaldi of the Internet age. The OLPC crew raised stupendous amounts of money and created machines that could run on solar power or could be cranked by hand, and they distributed them to poor children around the developing world, but alas, according to Sax, “academic studies demonstrated no gain in academic achievement.” Last year, in fact, the OECD reported that “students who use computers very frequently at school do a lot worse in most learning outcomes.”
At the other end of the educational spectrum from African villages, the most prestigious universities on earth have been busy putting courses on the Web and building MOOCs, “massive open online courses.” Sax misses the scattered successes of these ventures, often courses in computer programming or other technical subjects that aren’t otherwise available in much of the developing world. But he’s right that many of these classes have failed to engage the students who sign up, most of whom drop out.
Even those who stay the course “perform worse, and learn less, than [their] peers who are sitting in a school listening to a teacher talking in front of a blackboard.” Why this is so is relatively easy to figure out: technologists think of teaching as a delivery system for information, one that can and should be profitably streamlined. But actual teaching isn’t about information delivery—it’s a relationship. As one Stanford professor who watched the MOOCs expensively tank puts it, “A teacher has a relationship with a group of students. It is those independent relationships that is the basis of learning. Period.”

The diagnosis fits with my perceptions as well. One of the problems MOOCs would always face, IMO, is that it left out how social an activity teaching and learning is. This is not so for everything, but it is so for many things, especially non-technical things. The problem is not the efficient transfer of information, but figuring out how to awaken the imaginative and critical sensibilities of students. (Note: these are harder to "test" than is the info transfer). The MOOCs conception treated students as "consumers" rather than "initiates." Ideas are not techniques. They need a different kind of exploration. Indeed, half of teaching is getting students to appreciate why something is important and that comes from the personal relation established between teacher and student and students to one another and student to teacher. This, at any rate, is Sax's view and if he is right then the failure of MOOCs as general strategies for education makes sense. Or, this would be a good reason for their failure.

BTW, there is a nice version of the relevant distinction in the movie The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie where Brodie notes that 'education' comes from the latin 'ex ducare' (to lead out) where much of what goes on is better seen as 'intrusion' as in 'thrust in.' Information can be crammed, thrust, delivered. Education must be more carefully curated.

Like I said, I wish this were the reason for the end of MOOCs, but I doubt it. What probably killed them (if they are indeed dead) was likely their cost. They did not really save any money, though they shifted cash from one set of pockets to another. In other words, they were scam-like and the fad has run its day. Will it return? Almost certainly. We just need a new technological twist to all for repackaging of the stuff. Maybe when virtual reality is more prevalent it will serve as the new MOOC platform and we will see the hysteria/hype rise again. There is no end to technological utopias because of their sales value. So expect a rise of MOOCs or MOOC equivalents some time soon at a university near you. But don't expect much more the next time around.

BTW, the stuff on board games was fascinating. Is this really a thing?

Some stuff on MOOCs

Remember MOOCs? They were supposed to be the next big new thing? Well, it seems that they are starting to run out of steam, at least in some places. Here is a terse comment by a relatively widely followed blogger who sums up the the realization among administrators that there is no money in them there hills. Moreover, that this epiphany is part of a long line of such going back to earlier cost saving methods.

One nice tidbit, that I think hits at the core of the issue, is that MOOCs were never really aimed at the elite. As noted, you can't charge 50k per year for a MOOCish curriculum. They were intended for the lower orders, you know San Jose State and other intellectual backwaters.  This always struck me as evidence that MOOCs were not being pursued for their educational value (if any, see next link) but as a way of gutting non-elite institutions.

And here is more wisdom on the issue (if you are interested). This piece replies to Brad DeLongs take on the issue here. I think it does a pretty good job, but judge for yourself.

Rethinking MOOCs

When MOOCs first came to the scene I expressed skepticism about their ultimate value for teaching and their capacity to really reduce costs without reducing educational quality (here, here). This, remember, was the selling point: more for less.  Flash forward to today and it seems that the problems with MOOCs is becoming more and more apparent. Sure, high tech has a role to play in education (sort of like overhead projectors and power point) but it is not the panacea bureaucrats and entrepreneurs like to hype (no doubt for only purely reasons, like moving large amounts of money into their nap accounts).  Well, it seems that MOOCs have hit their high water mark and skepticism about their general educational value is being reassessed. Not surprisingly, they can bring good results, but only if labor intensively used. Also, not surprisingly, it seems that getting people to use them means lowing what MOOCs are used to do. Here's a discussion. I don't buy it all, but it's a good sign of where the discussion is heading.

MOOCs, education, credentials and basic research

Here's another essay investigating the MOOC issue and its relation to education. There are two points. First, that lots of what is intended when people speak of "education" is really how to effectively provide credentials that will enhance job prospects. Second, that what you learn is less important that who you meet. MOOCs may help with the first, but won't address the second. And as the second dominates in determining one's life opportunities, MOOCs will simply serve to further disadvantage the less advantaged. This, in part, reflects my own jaundiced views about MOOCs, with one more perverse twist. Should MOOCs win the day, then we might discover that we destroy research as well as education. Look at what happened to Bell Labs when we made telecommunication more efficient. A by-product of MOOCing the university might be the elimination of any venue for basic research. At least in the US and Canada, the only place basic research happens is the university and the university in the US and Canada effectively tethers undergrad instruction to a research engine. Break the bond and there is no reason to suppose that there will be no place for basic research. So, MOOCs may not only kill education (that's my hunch) but destroy basic inquiry as well.

Whither MOOCs?

So, I have long been skeptical that MOOCs had the messianic potential its supporters have claimed on its behalf. To a grizzled skeptic comme moi this seemed like just another venture that administrators concoct every so often of make themselves look like visionary bidnessmen, out to save humanity while making a quick buck on the side.  Of course, this time could be different. This was not just another case of TQM (total quality management) or efficiency management. This time, we found the magic ingredient: something able to both cut ever increasing costs and enhance the educational experience. Not surprisingly, this time the source of our salvation came dressed up in silicon, the techies leading the way to the promised land, all the while making a couple of bucks: doing well by doing good. Who could legitimately complain?

Now the second thoughts are starting to cluster like buzzards around a wounded water buffalo.  The beast is not yet down, and maybe it will make a remarkable recovery, but it has seriously stubbed its toe (or whatever it is WBs have) and the limp may betoken more serious problems. The most serious one being that it may not really save much money anyhow and maybe it won't really enhance the educational experience as advertised and maybe modern students, even those accustomed to YouTube and Pinterest won't find the hot new MOOCish environment all that stimulating. After all, there is quite a difference between watching cats do their thing and watching stats videos.

At any rate, here's an NPR piece (news on NPR is like a Whole Foods opening in an "up and coming" neighborhood; either is a sure sign that the news is in fact old) recounting some MOOC travails. Note the twin themes: the courses tried out sucked and they weren't cheaper. The second point might be more important than the first. after all this stampede has largely been driven by bureaucrats, pols, and entrepreneurs; not a trio famed for caring first and foremost about the public good. At any rate, it seems that we are now getting ready for MOOCs 2.0, where humans are reintroduced into the equation. I'm sure that pretty soon we will discover that for lots of learning, its good to have LOTS of such interaction, for as Tracy Wheeler observes in the piece, learning has a large social dimension. Does this mean that we will soon rediscover the virtues of the class room wo/manned with human instructors? And the reinvention of university campuses (Coursera is calling these "learning hubs," cute, eh? I can see it now: The Harvard/Yale Learning Hub). Who knows?  From where I sit, the bidness strategy of MOOCs is to figure out how to siphon money that goes to college instructors and redirect it towards tech companies who promise to deliver a cheaper superior product. If the product is not cheaper and/or the product is not superior, then executing this plan will require some film-flam. So buckle your seat belts and get ready for the fun. There's lots of money potentially at stake, and when this happens, you can count on the BS to flow freely.

Have MOOCs peaked already?

I have been somewhat skeptical that MOOCs are the world changing innovations that supporters have supposed them to be. I have tended to regard the claims that they are "game changers" that would do to universities what online news sources have done to the press (or what online porn has done to the salacious magazine industry) as hype generated by those that want to put their hands on your wallet, or, even worse, the latest new thing that college administrators intend to use to "cut costs" (no doubt in part, my cynical self tells me, to save their own perks and salaries). I have noted that the evidence, such as it is, does not yet indicate that MOOCs are better at delivering a quality education at a good price than old style correspondence courses were and, so far as I can tell, the latter did not serve to upend the university system.

None of this is intended to demean the wonders of online resources. I LOVE them. I like being able to get online courses, I love being able to avail myself of the tons of excellent material more knowledgeable souls have graciously placed online FREE for my benefit. The world is a better place for this. However, I still think that the old-fashioned educational system, where learning is largely a kind of group hug, is the close to optimal because it embodies the human fact that education is a strongly social enterprise. Solo efforts can and do occur, but it really helps to have a community that is up close and personal, and in a real not a virtual way for real education to take place.

Why do I repeat this again here. Well, Josh Falk was kind enough to send me this fascinating interview with Sebastien Thrun, the founder of Udacity. Here's Josh's rather good take on the interview:

Sebastian Thun, the cofounder of a major MOOC company, offers a moderately pessimistic view of his own product.

Some choice quotes:

"We were on the front pages of newspapers and magazines, and at the same time, I was realizing, we don't educate people as others wished, or as I wished. We have a lousy product."

"The sort of simplistic suggestion that MOOCs are going to disrupt the entire education system is very premature."

"We're not doing anything as rich and powerful as what a traditional liberal-arts education would offer you."

There's a lot more to the interview than that, and some of his points are subtler than these cherry-picked quotes would suggest, but it's interesting that even someone who runs this type of business is expressing significant doubts.

The interview has gotten lots of collateral play.  Thrun is clearly a serious person, and not just somewhat out to make a buck. MOOCs may in fact change the world, but right now, the momentum is coming not from its obvious educational superiority but because their are large amounts of money to be made in destroying reforming the current university system. IMO, these different educational platforms will not be fought out in the marketplace where consumers (aka students/parents) vote with their dollars and spend on cheaper MOOC educations rather than costly four year colleges. Rather, right now the strategy of MOOC advocates is to convince Higher Ed to throw in the towel and go MOOC so as to prevent later MOOCification down the road. And the convincing is being done by those that have a lot to gain if they win. In this regard, the dialectics is similar to what we see from the Petersen Foundation wrt Social Security: cut it now because we might need to cut it later. The bottom line? When you read the MOOC hype ask that age old but still relevant question, cui bono? Who benefits?

More on MOOCs

The discussion on MOOCs is heating up. There is an issue of the Boston Review dedicated to the topic.  The five papers (here) are all worth reading if you are interested in the topic, which, as you may have guessed, I am. For what it’s worth, I suspect that the MOOCs movement is unstoppable, at least for now. The reason is that various different elite groups have reached a consensus that this is the elixir that will energize pedagogy at the university all the while reducing cost, enhancing the status, influence and coffers of leading private institutions and making excellence available to the masses. So exciting, cheap, “quality” led, elite enhancing and democratic. Who could resist?  Well, as you know, beware when something sounds too good to be true.  Here are some of my reservations.

First, I believe that there is an inherent tension between cheap and pedagogically effective.  There is a large group of powerful people (e.g. politicians, see the Heller here) who see MOOCs as a way of solving the problem of overcrowding (a problem related to the fact that public funding of universities has declined over the last 20 years). But if you want courses with high production values that entertain the young it costs. The idea behind MOOC’s potential cost savings seems to be that a one-time investment in an entertaining course will pay dividends over a long period of time. I’m skeptical. Why? Well, old on line material does not weather well. If one’s aim is to engage the audience, especially a young one, then it needs a modern look and this requires frequent update.  And this costs.  Of course, there are ways of containing these costs. How? By reducing faculty and making them adjuncts to the MOOCs.  William Bowen, past president of Princeton, believes that cost containment could be achieved as follows: “[i]f overloaded institutions diverted their students to online education it would reduce faculty, and associated expenses.” It is of course possible that this will be done well and education will be enhanced, but if a principle motivation is cost containment (as it will have to be to make the sale to the political class), I wouldn’t bet on this.

Second, there is a clear elitism built into the system. Read Heller’s paper (p.9) to get a good feel for this. But the following quote from John Hennesy, the president of Stanford, suffices to provide a taste:

“As a country we are simply trying to support too many universities.  Nationally we may not be able to afford as many research institutions going forward.”

Heller comments:

If elite universities were to carry the research burden of the whole system, less well-funded schools could be stripped down and streamlined.

So MOOCs will serve to “streamline” the educational system by moving research and direct teacher contact to elite institutions. This will also serve to help pay the costs of MOOC development as these secondary venues will eventually pay for their MOOCs. As Heller notes (p. 13): “One idea for generating revenue [for MOOCs, NH] is licensing: when a California State University system, for instance, used HarvardX courses, it would pay a fee to Harvard, through edX.” This is the “enticing business opportunity” (p. 4) that is causing the stampede into MOOCs by the elite schools (As the head of HarvardX says: “This is our chance to really own it.”). So state schools will save some money on public education by (further) cutting tenured faculty and some elite players stand to make a ton of change by providing educational content via MOOCs. A perfect recipe for enhanced education, right? If you ansered ‘Yes,’ can I interest you in a bridge I have? Of course my suspicions may come from bias and self-interest, coming as I do from a public state institution, I am less enthusiastic about this utopian vision than leading lights from Stanford and Harvard might be.

MOOCs also have a malign set of potential consequences for research and graduate education in general. I hadn’t thought of this before, but the logic Peter Burgard (from Harvard) outlines seems compelling to me (Heller:14-15):

“Imagine you’re at South Dakota State,” he said, “and they’re cash-strapped, and they say, ‘Oh! There are these HarvardX courses. We’ll hire an adjunct for three thousand dollars a semester, and we’ll have the students watch this TV show.’ Their faculty is going to dwindle very quickly. Eventually, that dwindling is going to make it to larger and less poverty-stricken universities and colleges. The fewer positions are out there, the fewer Ph.D.s get hired. The fewer Ph.D.s that get hired—well, you can see where it goes. It will probably hurt less prestigious graduate schools first, but eventually it will make it to the top graduate schools. If you have a smaller graduate program, you can be assured the deans will say, ‘First of all, half of our undergraduates are taking MOOCs. Second, you don’t have as many graduate students. You don’t need as many professors in your department of English, or your department of history, or your department of anthropology, or whatever.’ And every time the faculty shrinks, of course, there are fewer fields and subfields taught. And, when fewer fields and subfields are taught, bodies of knowledge are neglected and die. You can see how everything devolves from there.”

So, a plausible consequence of the success of MOOCs is a massive reduction in graduate education, and this will have a significant blowback on even elite institutions. Note that the logic Burgard outlines seems particularly relevant for linguistics. We are a small discipline, many linguists teach in English or langauge departments, and we tend to fund our grad programs via TAships. Note, further, that according to Hennesy (above), this downsizing is not a bug, but a feature. The aim is to reduce the number of research institutions, and this is a plausible consequence of MOOCing undergraduate education.

It gets worse. Were MOOCs to succeed, this would result in greater centralization and homogenization in higher education (imagine everyone doing the same HarvardX course across the US!).  Furthermore, to extend MOOCs to the humanities and behavioral sciences (linguistics included) will require greater standardization. In fact, simply aiming for a broad market (Why? To make a MOOC more marketable and hence more economically valuable) will increase homogeneity and reduce idiosyncracy. Think of the text book market, not a poster child for exciting literature.  Last, if the magic of MOOCs is to be extended beyond CS and intro bio courses to courses like intro to linguistics, it will require standardizing the material so that it will be amenable to the automatic grading, an integral part of the whole MOOC package. Actually one of the things I personally find distasteful about MOOCs is the merger of techno utopia with BIG DATA. Here’s Gary King’s (the MOOC guru at Harvard according to Heller) “vision” :

We could not only innovate in our own classes…but we could instrument every student, every classroom, every administrative office, every house, every recreational activity, every security officer, everything. We could basically get the information about everything that goes on here, and we could use it for students (9-10).

Am I the only one that finds this creepy?  Quick: call Edward Snowdon!!

As I said at the outset, I doubt that this is stoppable, at least for now. This is not because there is a groundswell of popular support bubbling up from the bottom, but because there is a confluence of elites -educational, technical, political, economic- that see this as the new big thing.  And there’s money in them thar hills. And there are budget savings to be had. And MOOCs can be sold as a way of enhancing the educational experience of the the lower classes (and boy does that feel good: doing well by doing good!). In addition, it is an opportunity for elite institutions to be come yet more elite, always a nice side benefit.

Let me end on a slightly optimistic note.  I personally think that the benefits, both educational and economic, of MOOCs is being oversold. This always happens when there is money to be made (and taxes to be shaved).  However, I suspect (hope) that what will sink MOOCs is their palpable second class feel. I just don’t see Harvard/Princeton students taking MOOCs in place of courses taught by high priced senior faculty (certainly not for $65,000/year). But if it doesn’t sell there, then it will be a hard sell in universities that serve the middle class. It will seem cheap in an in your face sort of way. And this, in the end, won’t play well and so MOOCs will run into considerable flak and, coupled with the fact that cost savings won’t materialize, the MOOCification of higher Ed will fail. That’s my hunch, but then I may just be an incurable optimist.   

More on MOOCs

Sorry for the earlier bad link. Thanks to Marc for mentioning it to me. I think it is now fixed.

Here is a link to a more elaborate discussion of MOOCs, for those interested in the issue and its possible consequences for linguistics teaching.  I tend to think that there are places where IT technology could really enhance education, but they are unlikely to be substitutes (in the best of worlds, complements) for face time where most of the inauguration into "thinking" will take place.  But, this is in the best of worlds, not the one that we are living in and the one that excites our academic "leaders." Most of our presidents, provosts, deans, etc are under pressure to control costs (or so I believe) and in this context the IT appeal is, I believe, pretty obvious.  At any rate, take a look at the Little post and the Bowen papers (if this topic interests you) for they (especially the latter) will undoubtedly prove to be influential in the coming debate (we should be so lucky as to actually have a debate).

Willie Sutton and the MOOCS

A recent issue of Scientific American reprints a story from Nature (here) by Mitchell Waldrop (who wrote a nice book on complexity several years ago) that featured linguist + university bureaucrat Juan Uriagereka in the opening paragraphs.  The story concerns MOOCS (massively online open courses) and the hysteria that they have generated in universityland. Here are the opening paragraphs:

When campus president Wallace Loh walked into Juan Uriagereka’s office last August, he got right to the point.  “We need courses for this thing – yesterday!”

Uriagereka, associate provost for faculty affairs at the University of Maryland in College Park, knew exactly what his boss meant. Campus administrators around the world had been buzzing for months about massive open online courses, or MOOCS: internet-based teaching program designed to handle thousands of students simultaneously, in part using the tactics of social-networking websites. To supplement video lectures, much of the learning comes from online comments, questions and discussions. Participants even mark one another’s tests.

The story goes onto describe how MOOCS have been sprouting all over the place and how different universities have been trying to cash in on what they see as the next big thing (btw, it stands to reason that they can’t all cash in for how many duplicate/triplicate/4-plicate/n-plicate internet courses does one need?).  It got me wondering, and not in a good way. I am a seriously cynical person.  A new fad hits town, one that gets administrators (university presidents no less) all aflutter, and I cannot resist wondering why? Why the sudden interest (panic)?  As the latin phrase goes “cui bono?” A good rule of thumb is to follow the money. Thus the suggestiveness of the phrasing in the second paragraph above “designed to handle thousands of students” (my emphasis). 

This suggests that administrators see MOOCS as cash cows (hence ‘MOOCS’?), ways of cutting costs at a time when education, at least in the US is getting ever more expensive.  And this is what worries me. Why? Before I tell you, I want to go on record as being a big fan of online stuff (duh), especially online course material. On line courses are great (though, like very large lecture classes, often boring (and for the same reason as they are often just videos of large lecture classes)) and some are unbelievably terrific (I love the Khan Academy stuff).  I would welcome lots more of this being available to use and enjoy. However, what I am not at all crazy about is the thought that MOOCS are money makers/savers, the main reason, I believe, for all that hyperventilating by university provosts and presidents.

What’s the problem? The advertised thinking behind MOOCS violates the Willie Sutton Principle (WSP) (he of the famous quip “That’s where the money is” in answer to the question: “Why do you rob banks?”).  The WSP favors technology that cuts costs where they are high. The problem with MOOCS relates to how they are being sold. Whereas they might be reasonable substitutes for big courses (say over 100 students in a classroom), these courses are already very cost effective, as Atrios (aka Duncan Black) observes at the blog Eschaton (here).  As he notes, the large intro courses (the big ones) “really don’t cost anything,” even taking into account high senior prof salaries and TA support. Thus, there aren’t cost savings here “because the costs are really low…for these kinds of students.” If this is so, the WSP kicks in and you have to ask yourself where the cost savings actually are? It’s the small courses stupid!  When you realize this, you begin to worry that the fascination with MOOCS can have very bad consequences.  Especially for a discipline like linguistics.

Most of the important teaching in linguistics goes on in small classrooms with lots of student participation. At UMD, our undergrad courses have 20-25 students in them. Were it possible to MOOC such courses it would be possible to save serious money. So, I predict, that whereas the evangelists are selling MOOCS by pointing to the large intro classes and observing that they would not be substantially changed by moving to a MOOC format, this is not where MOOCS will earn their keep for there isn’t enough money lying fallow there.  The pressure will develop to MOOC the non intro small courses for following the WSP that’s where the money is. And this will impact disciplines like linguistics where heretofore most of the important teaching has taken place in small class formats. 

I’m not sure that MOOCS can be stopped. Fads usually can’t be. I am sure of one thing: when university presidents get all hyped up about some new fangled idea beware.  The BS is about to flow.  So, when you hear the hype remember Willie Sutton, the patron saint of bank robbers and reformist bureaucrats.