Are MOOCs the great equalizer?

The holidays are often a time for reflection — a time to look back on the year that’s passed and forward toward the year to come. While this is a personal endeavor for most, its not uncommon for businesses and other organizations to spend time reflecting, too.

For those of us who work in colleges and universities, there’s a lot to reflect on. What’s exciting for me, given my role leading IT in higher education, is that technology is playing a pivotal role in changing our industry.

One such change has come in the form of “massive open online courses,” or MOOCs. MOOCs are online courses that are conducted asynchronously, and anyone in the world with an Internet connection can register for them.

They are generally free and some have had as many as 160,000 participants. Massive, indeed.

While MOOCs have been around since 2008, they rose to prominence in late 2012 when The New York Times proclaimed 2013 to be the “year of the MOOC” and many believed that MOOCs would be the “disruptive innovation” — a term coined by Harvard professor Clayton Christensen — that changed higher education forever.

Because MOOCs are accessible to anyone, anywhere, and at no cost, many believed that there would no longer be the need for a “traditional” education at a regional college or university.

Students could string together their education by taking a series of MOOCs — a computer science course from a professor at MIT, a history course taught by a world-renowned historian at University of California, Berkeley, a biology course from a third university, and so on.

A little less than two years later it seems unlikely that MOOCs will completely transform higher education. Taking courses online can be somewhat impersonal, and requires a certain amount of discipline that many younger college students find challenging. MOOC completion rates are often less than 10 percent.

And then there’s the issue of certification — how we can be sure a student mastered each course and who can issue a degree based on completion of courses for a multitude of institutions.

Although MOOCs may not entirely disrupt higher education, they are an important innovation nonetheless.

MOOCs enable institutions to provide a public good — sharing some of their faculty’s knowledge and expertise with their local community and the world. Individuals who have a personal interest in a subject can learn more about it from an expert in the field who may be several states or even countries away.

Similarly, professionals who need or want to expand their job knowledge and don’t need a specific certification or degree can learn what they need to from a MOOC.

Several colleagues and I, for example, are enrolled to begin a MOOC in January on gamification — how games and game theory can be applied to education to enhance student learning.

MOOCs also have interesting implications for how content is taught at colleges and universities. Is it really necessary to have each and every university in the country teach a version of American History 101, for example, or could some of that content be delivered via an “approved” MOOC?

Under this model, students could potentially spend classroom time focused on deeper discussion and inquiry about the subject rather than spending it learning the basic content.

Alternately, this model may be used to reduce the amount of time it takes to earn a college education, with students taking some courses in-person and some through self-paced MOOCs.

Another benefit that MOOCs provide is access to education for anyone in the world.

Consider places that do not have good education systems, or individuals who may not be entitled to an education where they live because of their class, race, gender or other attribute. MOOCs have the potential to be the great equalizer — providing access to a quality education to anyone who can access the Internet from their home, a coffee shop, or elsewhere.

In a world that increasingly needs an educated populace, this may be the greatest value of all.

Raechelle Clemmons is vice president and chief information officer at St. Norbert College. She can be reached at raechelle.clemmons@snc.edu. You can also follow her on twitter @rclemmons.