ACM Interactions

An essay by Clay Shirky asserts that MOOC impact on higher education will parallel the impact of MP3s. The music industry could suppress Napster but not a deeper change: We can listen to the song we want when we want rather than buy it packaged in a CD with unwanted content. Whether or not a particular MOOC platform succeeds, the significant change is that students can now learn what they want when they want, freed from the education industry’s packaging of desirable and less desirable content into majors and degree programs.

MOOC deniers argue that quality control is hard, higher education is more than classes, and elite credentials will retain value. Do these arguments impress you? The Web ushered in an era of lector emptor, caveat emptor, employer beware. If you are hiring a credential, OK, but if you are hiring for skills, you will find a way to assess them. Clever universities and other brick-and-mortar or online entities will find ways to provide the extracurricular benefits. Shirky’s analysis is looking good.

A nagging question remains. Audio- and video-recorded lectures have been around for decades. Why haven’t they taken off? MOOC epicenter Stanford proved in the 1970s that students who met in small groups to view and discuss a pre-recorded lecture did better than students who attended the lecture [1]. This finding was replicated by various education research teams, yet the approach never got traction. Why?

Was it the difficulty of producing or finding good lectures around which to build courses? Is a live performance preferable when it is an option despite inferior learning outcomes? We need to know—what might overcome the preference for live performances or be added to online performances to make them feel live?

As couch potatoes, we consume video content alone. Sort of. Studio audiences accompany late night viewers and laugh tracks are a staple of sitcoms because the ersatz camaraderie is effective. Download counts give a sense of crowd participation to TED talks and other YouTube viewing.

We’re easily enough pulled away from the couch to mingle and applaud with other people. Hollywood box office set a record last year. I often trek to local theaters, concerts, athletic events, and live lectures to see things that I could view from a better angle at home, more comfortably and with less time traveling and waiting in queues.

How important is the sense of synchronized co-viewing? Do most addicts of daytime soaps discuss the week’s action with friends? I avoid pre-recorded athletic competitions and award ceremonies that I would watch as live broadcasts even when I don’t know who won. I don’t know why. Perhaps I don’t feel I’m temporally accompanying the spectators visible at the event, or I won’t be likely to discuss the activity later with others who saw it earlier. Perhaps when watching such an event I unconsciously hope to magically influence an outcome by rooting, which I know I can’t do if it is already over.

Returning to the theme of education, assignment deadlines and quizzes provide a sense of group participation, along with some flexibility in when the content is viewed. Clay Shirky’s elite university experience included great lectures and small discussion sections. MOOCs could rise or fall on well-designed small-group student interactions as much as on lecture quality, for all but the most motivated and capable students. Stanford in the 1970s found that the psychology of engagement trumped content quality. In those trials, teaching assistants led the group discussions, but others established that TAs are not necessary [2].

MOOCs are working for some people. We don’t know how effective these channels will be for what percent of the population, or what the impact will be on post-secondary or even secondary education. Will only a few instructors be needed? Did the explosion of pop music recordings decrease the number of high school garage bands performing at local functions? Perhaps not. Has the Web, Wikipedia, and YouTube concentrated instruction? Print encyclopedias are gone, but more people contribute to Wikipedia entries and are recording and uploading how-to tutorials for almost anything imaginable. An instructor might utilize available materials for most lectures, yet for one or two topics of the highest personal interest create and even upload a lecture.

Technology over the next decade is likely to profoundly reconstruct education: K12, post-secondary, and informal. If you have an opinion as to how it will play out, I’d like to hear from you.

Endnotes:

1. Gibbons, J.F., Kincheloe, W.R., and Down, K.S. Tutored videotape instruction: A new use of electronics media in education. Science 195 (1977), 1139-1146.

2. Stone, H.R. Economic development and technology transfer: Implications for video-based distance education. In Contemporary Issues in American Distance Education. M.G. Moore, ed. Pergamon, 1990, 231-242.

Thanks to Bob Larson for pointing out Clay Shirky’s essay, and to interactions blog readers who have contacted me directly. To jump-start use of the online Comment field below (which perhaps should be labeled Discussion) I considered hiring Turkers, but instead I’ll offer a bribe: your beverage of choice when next our paths cross.

Jonathan Grudin