Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ The Digital Disruption of Higher Education– “uni for nothin’, MOOCs for free”? (2022)

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

The tone of the title sets expectations for this article (40 page MS Word Doc). It "presents an agenda for large Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs) to empirically validate digital platforms that could fulfil the aspirations of the key stakeholder groups." But the argument used to get to that point is not convincing and often wrong. For example, the authors write, "As Li & Yang (2018) put it: 'The business model of MOOCs is freemium, which relies on variable cost minimisation.' This is the "banking model of education" that Freire (2007) had warned about in his classic essay titled 'Pedagogy of the Oppressed'". It's nothing of the sort, of course. Or for example, "Surely socratic.org which exclaims 'take a photo of your homework question and get answers … a digital tutor in your pocket' cannot possibly be a substitute for face-to-face cooperation, collaboration and co-innovation?" Probably not, but nobody is suggesting it would.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: May 05, 2024 07:00 a.m.

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