MOOCs from a historical – and magical – perspective
“No time to say hello, goodbye”. Innovators in education are these days like the white rabbit in Alice’s adventures in Wonderland: they jump from one innovation to the other and have no time to look backwards to validate their ideas and find inspiration from the past.
Let’s take the example of MOOCs, these “massive open online courses” that are presented as “the” solution for opening up education to all. We used to count students by the tens or hundreds in classrooms or amphitheatres. We are now designing a universal classroom with hundreds of thousands – perhaps millions – of students. Universities, students, professors, business angels, and policy makers have embarked on an adventure that should transform the way we learn and the way we teach.