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.

ProctorU Offers Online Eyes for Online Testing

MOOC's movers and shakers
(Image: Chronicle of Higher Education)

When the MOOC phenomenon began a couple of years ago, the hype suggested the world would soon receive free courses from the globe's top academic minds. That siren song has slowly evolved into universities paying for MOOCs. The P&L for MOOCs versus live teaching was just too attractive for the institutions and profs to ignore.

One issue that emerged alongside the MOOC stampede was the matter of secure testing. The standardized testing world, especially in Asia, is corrupt and prone to profound bouts of cheating. That situation has created what Americans like to characterize as an "opportunity." In this case, a few enterprises, whose purpose was to provide online monitoring of online testing, were started. One of anti-cheating firms, ProctorU, was the centerpiece of a feature story in today's siliconvalley.com.

Ironically, PU's proctors are typically college-aged students who earn less than nine dollars per hour for their snooping. The U makes proctors available at any time of day, probably to accommodate international students. According to the siliconvalley.com story, students are charged $20 for the service.

That sounds like tip money until you start doing the math. A full-time student typically takes at least five courses per semester. That's $100 for the online testing portion of their semester's academic experience. Meanwhile, over 6.5 million students took online classes in fall 2011. Multiply that figure by $100 and you come close to what Twitter's IPO generated, without any SEC or Wall Street analyst hassles to outfox.

The next time someone suggests there is no money in education, think about ProctorU's cash-strong business. Yes, something stinks at PU.

MOOCs Score Statewide University Contracts

The MOOC juggernaut achieved a major coup today, as ten large university systems jumped onboard higher education's online class bandwagon. According to a story in siliconvalley.com, major state systems, including New York, have joined MOOC's parade.

The article notes that today's announcement "shows the extent to which, for cash-strapped university leaders and policymakers, the MOOCs and the platforms they are built on offer an irresistible promise of doing more with less -- to scale up education and help students move more efficiently toward a degree."

Coursera, which offers the MOOC package cited in today's siliconvalley.com story, makes $3,000 per course, plus $25 per student enrolled in a MOOC course. It doesn't sound like much, until one multiplies $25 by, say, 25,000 students. That sum is $625,000 for one class. The state systems annually enroll tens of thousands of students, and they typically take more than one course.

I leave the higher math to you.

MOOC Inroads Stir Cal University Faculty Protest Letter

Image: insidehighered.com

The insular world of higher education was overdue for an institutional earthquake. When faculty of elite universities, such as Harvard and Stanford, began their commercial foray into online education initiatives such as MOOC, the ground under smug tenured faculty throughout Academia shook. The packaging of courses available to a worldwide audience, provided by intellectual stars across the academic firmament, led to the potential destabilization of higher ed's lesser lights' stature and value. Given Academia's cynical, relentless tuition and fee increases over the years, any doubt about the financial value of a tenured professor's "required" course and autocratic program requirements would be problematic to those whose "workload" includes paid summer-long vacations, paid sabbaticals, business development activities beneficial to the university and to the prof (a/k/a grants), and other activities that do not directly involve (heaven help us) instructing a generation of students.

For university administrators, tech's high priests, and the shadow world of "privatized" higher ed, the weakness of a professor's value proposition screamed for a profit-oriented "solution." MOOCs were, in some ways, made to order to resolve this conundrum. While positioned as game changers by well-intentioned university-based educators, the notions of profit and control were rarely discussed. Rather, MOOCs were characterized as the 21st Century version of "power to the people." Did anyone say "lifetime learning?"

Reporter Katy Murphy(photo: twitter.com)

Well, Academia' professorial B-list finally woke up to MOOC's implications for their jobs, their institutions, and (ahem) students. Recently, San Jose State University's philosophy department sent an open letter protesting their school's embrace of MOOC. The downloadable letter, included in Oakland Tribune reporter Katy Murphy's story on the topic,  provides cogent points regarding the MOOC encroachment into what had been the philosophy department's once-sacred grove. The story was picked up by the Mercury News, based in San Jose and in the heart of Silicon Valley.

While I don't agree with all positions the letter asserts, the document does present issues that should be considered, argued, and openly considered.

Understanding the impact and implications of MOOC leads to a broader inquiry into some of high tech's darker corners. Data mining, privacy usurpation, education as a handmaiden to business imperatives, depersonalized intellectual development -- all of these issues are at the heart of a data-driven nightmare that triumphalist technophiles are trumpeting as desirable directions for our society.

While it's difficult to sympathize with the San Jose State philosophy staff, they have raised the battle flag. What's needed is an articulate, persuasive position that questions tech's breezy assumptions regarding human behavior and the industry's dismissive preference for total power. It is individuals who should be in control of their destiny, not an algorithm written by someone who values data architecture and statistically-based mumbo jumbo over the human heart's poetic mysteries and our infinite realizations of beauty.

The MOOC Movement's Big Splash

Daphne Koller
(photo from Stanford University)

The Massive Open Online Courses movement, often called by the acronym MOOC, has recently taken a strong step forward into a brave new higher educational world. An online startup called Coursera is offering courses in selected tech subjects and math suitable for higher education. The firm is the brainchild of two Stanford University professors, one of whom is a MacArthur grant winner. Their goal is to transform "the face of higher education," noted Daphne Koller, one of the Stanford pair.

Coursera, and its MOOC relatives, essentially provide courses taught by star professors. Participants don't earn university credit, but then again, the courses are free. The story, which has received wide, big-league media coverage, hints at MOOC's tremendous implications without really stating them. (The Seattle Times version, which has a hometown interest, as the University of Washington signed a deal with Coursera, is linked here.)

The rather obvious implication in the MOOC movement is turning higher education into a monopoly of star professors. Why would anyone want to study chemistry or poetry from some also-ran doc? Those who has endured the American university system knows first hand how many courses are occupied by researchers who can't teach or communicate. For lower-tier colleges, MOOC is an existential threat, unless they turn their faculty into glorified MOOC teaching assistants. Of course, that strategy would lower salaries and, voila, make college cheaper to operate. The star profs, meanwhile, would be worth millions.

Coursera and others in the MOOC movement have considered the profit motive in their enterprises' calculations. The Seattle Times story quoted a University of Washington provost's estimate of $30,000 required for "one online course, and 'you have to monetize this in some fashion.' Coursera has outlined two models for making money....Under terms of the contract with the UW, the organization would get a 7 to 15 percent return of gross revenue under either scenario...But Coursera's courses still would be free."

Image from Jeremy Knox,
a co-instructor for a Coursera course.

The most interesting part of the story is how Coursera would use "data-mining software" to grasp how students were learning. I'm doubtful any system based on data analytics can foster true intellectual growth. Instead of the Socratic method and dialogue, we're left with a data-driven nightmare principally designed for the benefit of top-down management and financial efficiency. While Coursera and MOOC programs may very well be splendid, they lack the intimate human touch genuine education needs.