Conflating MOOCs with all of online education: Cambridge, Edinburgh, and some nuance (please)

Nothing to see here, learners. This isn’t the classroom.

I stumbled across this article brought to my attention by a few different people from my network and I wanted to briefly mention my take on the issue.  The article has Professor Mary Beard of Cambridge warning of the dangers of MOOCs as a means of subverting the teacher/student dynamic in favor of tutors or automated grading mechanisms. I am going to err on the side of caution in my response here as I have the distinct impression that some of the problem I had with this article was the editorial/journalistic framing of it rather than Professor Beard’s actual logic.

First and foremost, as endless people have or no doubt will point out, is the conflation of MOOCs with all of distance learning. Notice the nuance in the following (from the journalist, not Professor Beard):

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