MOOCs - The Face of Exponential Change in Higher Education

Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and other Open University concepts are beginning to take hold and provide a "disruptive" challenge to the traditional higher education face-to-face models.  They are free, well-organized and delivered online to students wherever they happen to be located. As a result, within a few years I believe colleges and universities will need to respond with low-cost distance education alternatives to attract students.

This expansion of digital online education aligns with the consumer patterns of production and consumption behavior in regards to other forms of digital media.  In the past, people didn't like having to buy entire music albums to listen to the few songs they liked, nor did they always relish the idea of travelling to a central store to purchase music.  Now consumers buy only the songs they want from wherever they happen to be located. This holds true with consumption of other media provided by MOOCs: video, news, library articles, journals etc. Clayton Christensen calls these trends disruptive innovations.

MOOCs and other online course technologies will push colleges and universities to drastically cut costs.reduce the number of physical buildings on a campus. Many of the physical buildings could be minimized or even eliminated with libraries going completely online. The library buildings and computer labs can be converted to low-cost study areas. So-called campus
bookstore storefront operations, which typically don’t sell many books anymore, can be minimized and placed largely online. Eventually physical facilities will be replaced with immersive simulation technologies.

The idea that colleges and universities are sole providers of higher learning and truth where access should be limited to those who are financially and academically able to succeed, is outmoded and needs to change to maintain relevance in this new era of lifelong learning. In times where information is readily available to anyone with an internet connection and a device with which to connect, it no longer makes sense that people are told who can or cannot receive a higher-ed experience.

By necessity, MOOC materials are web-based, or at least deliverable over an online connection. Textbook have the advantage of longevity, but today are relics of yesteryear.  The CIO of Google estimated that since
the birth of the world and 2003, some five exabytes of information were created. Since 2003, the world creates 5 exabytes every two days and knowledge by some estimates doubling every 2 years (Kurzweil, 2005),
not only are the contents of textbooks outdated by the time they are published, but the contents are static, unable to be corrected, updated or made interactive. E-books and web-based content are the future of information exchange because they precisely allow for those innovations. Flexible displays, flexible e-ink papers and display glasses are only a year or two away and will drive content quickly away from print to digital media to the frustration of publishers who are already trying hard to force digital rights managament measures  onto users. All in the attempt to control the flow of information.

Fortunately, there are disruptive elements that may yet break the stranglehold publishers exert on the marketplace. Open textbooks published electronically by the professors who write them and textbook republishers who take publicly available content, copy it and arrange it in the same chapter order as the dominant textbooks in any field of study and
distribute it free to students.

 

Ultimately, I believe MOOCs and other online technologies present an exponential threat to the higher education industry in the way Napster had to the music industry. Colleges and universities will be forced to respond with lower costs and greater availabiltity when faced with the efficiencies and increased recognition of MOOCs and online courses. As we've experienced in our course at USD, synchronous technologies can be more personalized than can large courses at state institutions.

Let the disruption begin!