MOOC Player Coursera Hires Netflix, Facebook Execs

MOOCs, a/k/a Massive Open Online Course, have touted their ability to "disrupt" traditional academic education by changing "delivery models." These Internet-based schemes offer open courses, worldwide participation, and replay capability. Much as in traditional higher education programs, the Q&A sessions are left to poorly paid teaching assistants. What they don't offer is a walk-in classroom and a live human being delivering "knowledge."

Coursera, started by two Stanford University computer science professors, is in the vanguard of the MOOC movement. Their desire to reshape the higher education landscape recently took an interesting turn. Earlier this month, Silicon Valley Business Journal (SVBJ) reported that Coursera hired two Valley executives. One was poached from Netflix; the other was swept away from Facebook. What do these two men (yes, they are men) have in common? Well, neither are educators. The Netflix wiz understands algorithms that use predictive models to suggest "choices" for end-users. In Coursera's case, that would mean students. The Facebook "engineer" has a background in making video and other groovy "necessities" function in a social network environment.

The SBVJ story noted that Coursera was in Series B venture funding. In other words, it had a long way to go before the VC crowd could cash in on the bull rush to MOOC Ed. However, it also noted that Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg just invested in an "education analytics" firm called Panorama Education. There was no word on whether Panorama Ed received any interest from the Newark, New Jersey school system, which Zuckerberg so publicly donated stock around the time of the opening of the unflattering movie The Social Network.