{"id":4555,"date":"2014-05-14T09:36:42","date_gmt":"2014-05-14T15:36:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=4555"},"modified":"2014-05-14T09:37:48","modified_gmt":"2014-05-14T15:37:48","slug":"from-moocs-to-ocs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=4555","title":{"rendered":"From MOOCs to OCs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"wreck\"<\/a><\/p>\n

“When I called a MOOC a lousy product I\u00a0wasn\u2019t kidding,” says Sebastian Thrun, the prime mover of the modern MOOC movement and the vast hype<\/a>\u00a0that came to surround it, in a new interview<\/a> at Pando Daily<\/em>. The fatal flaw in the “classic MOOC,” Thrun now says, is that it was free. You can only have a decent MOOC if you get rid of the MO and just have the OC.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s not a MOOC [anymore] because we end up charging for it,” Thrun says, in describing the new online courses offered by his company, Udacity, which require students to pay a fee to receive a “service layer” of mentorship. “I feel confident asking people for money because their\u00a0money is better spent on this than doing a free course and dropping out after a week.”<\/p>\n

But doesn’t charging tuition subvert the grand promise that free online courses would “democratize” higher education?<\/p>\n

Replies Thrun: “All our material is still available for free. If\u00a0you\u2019re a student who\u00a0can\u2019t afford the service layer you can take the MOOC, on demand, at your own pace. If\u00a0you\u2019re affluent, we can do a much better job with you, we can make magic happen.”<\/p>\n

The poor get the “lousy.” The affluent get the “magic.”<\/p>\n

As history professor Jonathan Rees delicately puts it<\/a>, “Pardon me while I go vomit.”<\/p>\n

But Thrun deserves the last word: “I am a total friend of honesty.”<\/p>\n

Image: “Wreck of School House,” from Library of Congress<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“When I called a MOOC a lousy product I\u00a0wasn\u2019t kidding,” says Sebastian Thrun, the prime mover of the modern MOOC movement and the vast hype\u00a0that came to surround it, in a new interview at Pando Daily. The fatal flaw in the “classic MOOC,” Thrun now says, is that it was free. You can only have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4555"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4558,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4555\/revisions\/4558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}