The third in a series of articles about last week’s UUK meeting on open and online learning.
Sir John Daniel (former VC of OU, adviser to Academic Partnerships)
Sir John is a believer in big – Mega universities, mega schools and MOOCs. He wrote a substantive paper about this last year,.
We can see education as a triangle with three sides – Access-Quality-Cost. It’s possible to reduce the cost but still get access and quality.
Sir John then compared Moore’s technology lifecycle with the Gartner technology hype cycle. He suggested that in the Moore’s lifecycle, we may be at the chasm between early adopters and early majority and on the Gartner cycle now near peak of inflated expectations.
From this he proposed that we could reach the trough of disillusion by end of this year or next and that through juxtaposition of these two models there could be a drop in MOOC activity
He believes that online learning essential and that providers must get with programme, but the question is how to climb the slope of enlightenment?
He proposed a hybrid model combining online with opportunities for f2f teaching and support and questioned whether offering MOOCs help this?
You will need help of a partner to climb the slope and Academic Partnerships ,to whom is an adviser, could do this.
He proposed Partnering for enlightenment with a MOOC as a taster of online learning but always aim of taking students to credit bearing online courses
Always an engaging speaker, Sir John clearly believes in the power of big, but importantly identifies also the idea of a hybrid model to support face to face teaching.
This picks up on other comments from VCs of Plymouth and Southampton where we can start to see MOOCs as just one part of the online learning ecosystem, and a possible way of supporting on campus students.
Even with all the hype though, it’s worth looking at the Educause paper I blogged about last week- some of the key questions that need to be asked are here, and shouldn’t be pushed aside under the avalanche of MOOC predictions.