We had 2012 as the year of the MOOC, 2014 was probably the year of the MOOC maturation, and I’m calling it for 2016, the year that university Vice Chancellors and Principals start looking and saying “what are we getting for our investment again?” This critical questioning has started somewhat, but largely money and university cooperation is still flowing. But I think we’ll have had long enough in 2016 to see if those investments have paid off. Here are five key areas that I predict we’ll see reported on, and will cause an investment rethink: MOOC education won’t be as cheap as envisaged – now we are seeing pricing models…

Now that we’ve had a few years of investment in MOOCs we can reflect on what this period tells us. I’m not talking about the value of MOOCs themselves, their pedagogy, or technology, but rather what this unprecedented amount of investment from universities and venture capitalists reveals. Rather unsurprisingly, people are now questioning the sustainability of this investment, and whether, you know, it was worth it. So here are my lessons from the MOOC investment bubble for anyone wanting to recreate it for any new venture. There is money around – MOOCs came just after the economic crisis, and yet when it was required, huge investments in actual cash, people,…

This is one of those posts where I don’t have a firm conclusion, I’m just thinking some stuff through. I’ve been thinking a bit about what the role of personality is in eduction, particularly online and distance ed. In my own institution, The Open University, there has been a long tradition of removing the personal from teaching material. While the course materials we produce are written in an accessible manner, they are not imbued with one person’s personality. Although one academic may write them, they go through multiple reviews, and editing. Course units are often attributed to the “The Module Team”, or “written by X on behalf of the Module…

It has become accepted practice amongst those who know about MOOCs to sniff at completion rates. Focusing on them (hell, even mentioning them) demonstrates just how constrained you are by the old ways of thinking daddio. I find this particularly from the cMOOC crowd, and I've stopped talking about them, because as David Kernohan suggests, to even talk about them is like saying you hate learning. The commonly used argument against completion rates (or even worse 'drop-out rates'), is that they aren't relevant. Stephen Downes has a nice analogy, (which he blogged at my request, thankyou Stephen) in that it's like a newspaper, no-one drops out of a newspaper, they…