Interesting post. The downside for those of us at Athabasca University seems to be at the bottom: it would appear George Siemens has flown the coop!

- Martin Connors

I don't think is so much about the MOOC bubble bursting.  MOOCs are still valuable and are a lot of fun.  But there are two expectations that may be unreasonable:  (1) that this is a good way to deliver courses for credit, and (2) that the venture capitalists will get their money back.  I remember the first dotcom boom where all these sorts of things were started up and there were lots of subscribers but no money.  Doesn't take a genius to figure out what went wrong.

As to offering the courses for full university credit, that's pretty tough too.  You can design exams, I suppose, that will have some validity given that so many exams are multiple choice even in "proper" university courses.  But those courses usually have a written assignment phase.  Or, in reverse, in my accounting courses, I have totally electronic assignments but I have a written exam where I demonstrate (or not) that I can produce a financial statement in good form.

Eve

Update - much of the course is on Moodle!

There are some clues in that article on what the "market" will be for MOOCs, and how traditional universities can differentiate themselves. A MOOC is not a serious course, it seems. It is for dilletantes, and information junkies and others with curiosity. It is not for serious learners, not for people who want to be experts in their field, and not for those who want to develop a depth and breadth of understanding. A MOOC has limitations right out of the box, not even in terms of implementation, but in terms of student expectations and how it will be used.

I think we have to have some big time discussions on what distinguishes a real, 13 week university course (online or not) from a MOOC.