Learning How To Learn is the name of the course which Team MOOCtastic (myself, Karen, and Todd) selected to participate in through the online learning MOOC platform of Coursera. Although the course is set up week by week, the entire content is available at once, and our team has completed it – perhaps in the manner of binge-watching on Netflix.
Having a taste of such flexibility delivered in a user-friendly manner might make learners of the world hungry for lifelong knowledge-building (like gorging at a buffet serving Universities). It might impact teachers, who can spy on other post-secondary instructors worldwide, garnering new ideas with teaching techniques and approaches to bring back to their own learning environment. The big money invested along with the monstrous numbers of students and institutions involved in MOOCs implies there will be some sort of disruption to the status quo over time, where only real psychics, fate, destiny, and/or your Lord/Lordess know the true outcome. Are MOOCs essentially raising or lowering the bar in the education-delivery Olympics?
Learning How To Learn provides understanding, tips, and techniques for learning efficiently. Learners are encouraged to tackle motivation-issues, approach studies in consideration of how the brain operates, and embrace subjects of learning beyond what individuals feel they are naturally good at.
xMOOC providers such as Coursera deliver education from universities all over the world. The accessibility is at the core of their strength. I see real opportunities for MOOC-providers embedded in the new economy of contract-based work and the commonly forecasted future full of unfathomable jobs which don’t exist yet and are constantly changing. If such a future is inevitable, much of the knowledge gained in traditional four-year degrees may quickly become obsolete much like technology seems to, rendering such credentials to being like a bachelor of demonstrating one’s ability to learn. As a human drowning in the activities of my life, legitimately-recognized, affordable micro-credentialing, delivered through easily-digestible videos sounds to me like a dreamy universe. Will MOOCs achieve widespread legitimacy (as in university credits)? Will they be affordable? Will they remain open?
The music and film industries share a relatively recent history upheaved by digital technologies. There are multifaceted tradeoffs from such a trend. The pool of content has widened, accessibility has exploded, and there are both opportunities and grave consequences for content-creators. The dethroning of gatekeepers and curation provides more options for outliers while consumers must now wade through oceans of endless material to find what they like. Choices of education, music, movies, jobs, and even relationships become more accessible and disposable, there is more selection, and less of a coherent and straightforward culture, with all the bad, good, and everywhere in-between implications. It may well be that: MOOCs are to education as iTunes is to music, as Tinder is to relationships, as Wikipedia is to encyclopedias, etc., etc., to infinity and beyond!