Our Best Educational Technologies Are Just Spiffy Email
MOOCs are new, but they don't represent a significant break with the educational software we have had for years.
Talk to the advocates of online courses like MOOCs and you’ll hear a familiar appeal: This is only the beginning. I heard it earlier this month, when I sat down with Anant Argarwal, the president of EdX. EdX is the MOOC-making non-profit, the result of a partnership between MIT and Harvard.
“Where do you see MOOCs going?” I asked him. I alluded to how current MOOCs, with their brief video modules and sequential approach, might not be best for things like humanities classes. His answer was revealing, and it’s worth quoting in full:
I think first of all the thing I want to point out is: This is Version 1. You are too young to have used email in 1982—you were probably not born in 1982 [Ed. note: This is correct; I was probably not born in 1982.]—but I used email in 1982. And I use email today, 30 years later. It’s a transformed experience. It’s completely different. And it took 30 years to get to where