“The death of the classroom as we know it,” an article published today on CNBC.com by reporter Kelley Holland, quotes KIE director and MOOC commander-in-chief Maggie Little, reflecting on an ongoing sea change in higher education.
“Some education experts believe MOOCs can go further” than simply reaching students as time-delimited live courses, writes Ms. Holland. “Maggie Little, director of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown, joined with several colleagues to create and launch a MOOC on bioethics last spring. This year, she plans to use the MOOC as a sort of living textbook for the Introduction to Bioethics class.”
“The class will meet twice a week, Little said, working on projects and the like. “In bioethics, you can’t really tell if you understand something unless you write a paper,” she said. The MOOC was expensive to create, she said, but it can now be delivered to anyone, and anyone can use it as a text for a class.”
“Little believes today’s typical classroom structure is neither educationally rich nor financially sustainable. “We can’t afford to be what we are now for much longer unless we do something radically different,” she said. “It doesn’t mean the disappearance of brick-and-mortar places. But it means rethinking what is the value added of having a highly personal, highly immersive experience.””