After the creators of MOOCs have agreed that their invention has failed miserably to teach anything to anybody, I consider any discussion of “MOOCs are coming to eat our jobs” in my presence to be an act of direct sabotage and aggression against me.
In my first year as a college professor, I was constantly warned about those nasty people who’d try to steal my time for their useless service obligations and boring committees. Nothing even remotely similar has happened to me since, so I’m concluding that this is a non-existing danger. The real threat are people who can’t survive without a high degree of stress and generate it everywhere they go. Of course, such people all have a legacy of being victims of abuse but they turn into abusers themselves when they involve others in their efforts to create high-stress environments.
Clarissa's Blog 
MOOC proponents are really funny. They clearly never actually tried to teach anybody anything. Any professor can vouch that teaching a 30-person class and a 100-person class are not the same: the dynamics is different and the reduced ability to interact individually with students definitely translates into poorer outcomes. In my experience, most humans learn best through an engaging interaction with other, more knowledgeable humans.
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Do you think any faculty actually believed that? I never met any who did, let alone say MOOCs were coming to take our jobs. Plenty of other people said it, though.
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This post was written in response to a colleague who is driving me nuts with these stories about big scary MOOCs devouring higher education. I’m not sure he believes it, just like I’m not sure people believe any of the apocalyptic stories they like sharing.
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I’ll admit to having taken Udacity’s Java programming course. Sure I could have taught myself that language without anyone’s help, but I probably learned a little more material in a little less time. Maybe. That was a few months ago. Just today I re-visited the udacity.com website and it’s like they’ve taken their mask off or something. The whole experience of reading the website now has an air of “yes Virginia, we’re going with the ‘freemium’ business model.” No more speculation about when that particular shoe will drop. At any rate, they are not a competitive threat to the indomitable Clarissa.
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I can’t teach anybody Java but I can’t teach people how to say this in several different languages. 🙂 🙂
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