Are MOOCs just a fad?

Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platforms have burst into the lives of millions of people.  The concept was born in 2008 by Dave Cormier and Bryan Alexander inspirated by the course "Connectivism and Connective Knowledge" designed by George Siemens. But the true impact came in the fall of 2011 with the "Artificial Intelligence" course offered by Stanford University. Since then millions of people have received courses in any of the platforms that have emerged (coursera, udacity, edX,...). Now, the burning questions that people ask are: What is the pedagogical value of this course? Are we simply dealing with a fad like already happened with Open Course Ware (OCW)? There are already a lot of responses and formed opinions, but I will give you my own.

I don't see MOOCs like a fad. I see that more like a normal, necessary and inevitable step to the new learning model.
In my opinion, the really interesting thing of MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) is not in these four words, but in the way courses are being implemented within these containers.

Based on my little experience (I have followed two courses and snooped around two more), these courses have supported in learning methodologies based on the collaboration of the participants. It is undeniable that the development of that courses are still guided by the content and its structure, but its success doesn't lies here.

In these learning spaces, I see the teacher like the captain of a ship, in which participants do not have the role of passengers but are the boat itself. The teacher must manage and take advantage of all this participation (which is very high due to its massive and open nature) to make the experience awesome.

The success of these platform, is due to several reasons. On the one hand we find that these courses are made by elite universities not accessible to everyone. Receiving lessons  from the best teachers in the world is an opportunity that nobody wants to miss. We must remember also that in many countries the access to the studies is hard to get for different reasons. The gratuity of MOOCs have made it accessible to many people.

On the other hand, we can observe the MOOC use as a way to continue training once you have finished your official academic studies. A revealing fact is that the audience aged between 25 and 35 years old is the most present in some of these courses. That detail confirms the need by people that has already completed his formal training, but even are building and maturing their job profile.

Current LMS platforms such Sakai CLE, Moodle, BB or D2L can leverage this feedback to improve its model. It should not only include  performance improvements, but also to give more importance to the tools that allow the student take more responsibility on the course development, allowing them to translate videos, share notes, create study groups, designate advanced students as consultants or even build the course goals and content. In the close future we'll see how this new eLearning paradigm merges with the reality of social networks. A very promising project is Sakai OAE. I will talk about it on my future posts.

If you want to know more about MOOCs and its future I really recommend you

to see Dr. +Chuck Severance's presentation at: http://www.dr-chuck.com/csev-blog/2012/11/abstract-moocs-are-really-great-but-whats-next/

Another interesting presentation by Daphne Koller at http://www.ted.com/talks/daphne_koller_what_we_re_learning_from_online_education.html