Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that college faculty and administrators are questioning what to do with massive open online courses (MOOCs).  In the last several months, a number of universities have signed contracts with Coursera, a private company specializing in offering MOOCs.  However, as the Chronicle article states, the worth of these courses are being debated.

“At many colleges, the faculty itself is divided over whether to embrace MOOC’s. “You have a division between some faculty members who are very excited about the potential of technology and really running with this, and people who are just trying to explore it” more cautiously, said Mark F. Smith, a senior higher-education policy analyst at the National Education Association.”

The University of Southern California’s president, C.L. Max Nikias, outlined the university’s goals for online education in a message to the campus. It noted that MOOC’s were off the table.

“Other universities are increasingly offering online courses for free, with scant concern for whether enrollees ever complete a course,” he wrote. “Our goal, by contrast, is to ensure that the educational experience is reserved for only those students with the requisite interest and ability to meet our faculty’s high expectations.” He added that Southern Cal “does not intend to join the growing ranks of institutions that seek to franchise undergraduate education through the Internet or through smaller satellite campuses abroad.”

While I tend to embrace the benefits of technology in instruction, I am curious as to how the MOOC model(s) will evolve.  As with many other aspects of instruction, much depends upon the quality of the teacher(s) and instructional designers regardless of technology.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Huffington Post has a short piece on remarks made by Linda McMahon, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut.

McMahon, the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, has consistently dodged questions about cutting government entitlement programs in her two Senate runs.

Speaking before a group of Tea Party supporters in Waterford, Conn. earlier this year, however, McMahon said she would consider making major changes to Social Security, from raising the retirement age to means-testing benefits. She also proposed introducing a “sunset provision” — the legislative term for putting an expiration date on a law unless it is renewed.

It’s unclear what McMahon meant when she spoke about a “sunset provision” for Social Security, and her campaign did not directly address the word in a statement. McMahon’s spokesman defended the candidate’s record on entitlement programs and attacked her opponent, Chris Murphy.

“Linda McMahon is committed to reforming entitlements without breaking the promises we’ve made to our seniors,” said Todd Abrajano. “Linda McMahon will never vote for a budget that cuts Social Security for seniors, …

At the April Tea Party gathering, McMahon said in response to a question about how to “strengthen” Social Security and Medicare that “we cannot continue doing things the way we are doing with Social Security. We’re just simply going to be bankrupt.”

The candidate later continued, “In other words, I believe in sunset provisions when we pass this kind of legislation, so that you take a look at it 10, 15 years down the road to make sure that it’s still going to fund itself. Social Security will run out of money if we continue to do what we’re doing, if we rob the trust fund, if we think that there’s any money there.”

Tony