Following MOOCs on the Gartner Hype Cycle
I was little surprised this week to find The Conversation's David Glance writing of the MOOC [Massive Open Online Courseware] revolution that never happened. Firstly, I've previously associated Glance with revolutionary views of MOOCs. Secondly, the term "MOOC" has only been around a short while and it seems premature to declare the whole thing over, as Alan W. Shorter's comment points out. It seems that Glance has moved from Gartner's Peak of Inflated Expectations through to the Trough of Disillusionment during the two years or so that MOOCs have existed. Radio National's Antony Funnell also reported a sobering of rhetoric from MOOC enthusiasts including Anant Agarwal, CEO of edX.
One supposes that wild-eyed enthusiasts who scale the Peak of Inflated Expectations are setting themselves up for a fall into the Trough of Disillusionment when the technology fails to deliver on those expectations, as the names suggest. More sober commentators, such as those who appeared on Radio National, strive to go straight to what Gartner calls the Slope of Enlightenment, leading to the Plateau of Productivity. Gartner's Hype Cycle doesn't seem to account for technologies for which such a plateau might not exist at all — electronic cash, flying cars and videophones come to mind — but even identifying a technology as having limited value is enlightenment of sorts. It remains to be seen what sort of Plateau of Productivity arises from MOOCs, if one arises at all.
The commentary in both the Conversation and Radio National pieces identify two key points that seem to have been well-known to sober commentators from the beginning of MOOCs, but overlooked by revolutionaries. Firstly, as Gavin Moodie frequently points out, very few university entrants have the intellectual independence required to master a topic without the guidance of a teacher. I suspect that this also contributes to findings reported on Radio National that 83% of MOOC participants are already highly educated — presumably, these people have already become the "independent learners" who Moodie argues to be the only ones likely to benefit from MOOCs. Secondly, what MOOCs provide isn't actually all that new, as experienced on-line educators like David White (on Radio National) and Sorel Reisman can tell you.
None of this is to say that MOOCs are necessarily useless, or that they'll never arrive at some Plateau of Productivity in a niche for which they are suited. I found the course that I tried interesting and informative — but, having already gained a PhD, I'm hardly the kind of fresh new-model student that MOOC enthusiasts expect to abandon universities. MOOC developers and users just need a bit more toiling on the Slope of Enlightenment instead of admiring the scenery on the Peak of Inflated Expectations.
