MOOC and the future of higher education

Like anyone in higher education, I have being involve in some online course design and instruction using hybrid mode of instruction in my local institution.  Massive online courses are changing the way instruction is done in higher learning in America since 1993 and this have raised a lot of questions among some  Faculty about its role in higher education and  fear that it will reduce quality of learning, ultimately replace instructor’s traditional face to face role in classroom. Also those faculty argued that MOOCs remove human interaction which they passive as students attraction to deeper learning. These  opposing views was my first experience of the other side of adopting MOOC in higher education.  Also I observe some dichotomy in who advocate for MOOC in higher education or Not…Majority of faculty in Humanities seem to have strong opposition compare to faculty in Science & Engineering also sizes of colleges also Matters a lot. Institution with large student population seem to buy more into MOOC that low enrollment institution.

I also learned a lot more than I knew before about MOOC. I am very excited about online courses for so many of its possibly benefits, lower cost of education, making high structured course available anywhere in the world without physical attendance, and use of online visual community to blog or chat among students and faculty, making available more instructional resources to students, students may not deal with understanding some faculty strong accents that may increase their difficulty in understanding a face to face classroom, etc.

What do I see in the future of MOOC? I do not see a complete end to MOOC  as mode of instruction but both parties on different sides should work together to produce a workable acceptable type of MOOC that will be adopted for higher learning. Presently data are been collected, in various institutions about what mode of learning works, in what situation and for whom. Some may engaged on what motivate today students, to make them stay in course to the end without dropping, Do we get over the hype of MOOC for now so that we can use what we know in Metacognition to produce a modified form of learning that is acceptable to students, Faculty and institution but also addressing increasing high cost of higher education.