I’m a big believer in MOOCs – early last year I started a course on Codecademy which was quite straightforward to begin with, but I didn’t quite manage to get the best out of it. Then earlier this year I did a Dan Ariely course on Coursera which I fully (and successfully) participated in. The subject of online education has also come up quite a few times in discussions with friends and family. I think the intellectual know-how it can give people who would otherwise struggle to access resources (Sugata Mitra’s School in the Cloud comes to mind here, as of course does Khan Academy), is amazing, and I feel lucky we live in times like these – all one really needs is time, patience and a will to learn.
It isn’t all fun and games though. If you’re a non-philanthropic investor in a MOOC, then you need to consider when and how you will get returns on your investment. I was quite interested therefore when I was recently pointed to this very interesting infographic from Online Schools that charts out what the future of MOOCs might be. I’ll be watching this space.
One Size Fits One 