This item was tweeted by Tressie Mc and while a defender at Black Mountain SOLE says "this article was a blatant bash" it is useful in displaying how MOOCs are portrayed in different communities. SOLE, in case you're wondering (the New Republic article never tells us) stands for Self-Organized Learning Envrionments, and it frankly has more roots in 1970s progressive development education and the more recent Bar Camp movement (an influence again never mentioned in the article, as it derives from the tech community). Black Mountain SOLE (according to the article) "was founded on the premise that college's last remaining selling point, in this digital age, is community—so it set out to replicate the effect." But "The last four months have gone a long way toward proving the theory wrong." It's not clear to me what (if anything) is proven wrong. The same model has been used in things like The Conscious Gourmet, Outward Bound, Kaos Pilots, and may others. Community works. But not every community works. In any case, I know few businesses that are successful after four months.
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