Will free online courses ever replace a college education?

Posted on July 23rd, 2014

The Atlantic explores whether MOOCs could replace a collage education and decides that in order to do that, “MOOCs would have to begin offering meaningful credits—the kind someone could take to a job interview and expect to have taken seriously.” Instead, according to Robert Lue, faculty director at HarvardX, the better question “is not whether HarvardX’s MOOCs will replace Harvard, but how to incorporate the insights from the MOOC revolution back into the traditional classroom. So far, the main lesson seems to be that old-school practices are badly in need of an update. The buzzwords here include blended learning and flipped classrooms.” The article concludes, “If nothing else, the MOOC-driven revolution may inspire classroom instructors to make their lessons more dynamic and figure out what really ignites students’ imaginations.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/07/how-online-courses-are-becoming-educations-new-wave/375152/