An interesting item from Inside Higher Ed:
News of universities partnering with massive open online course providers has become commonplace, which is why Yale University stands out for what it’s not doing: rushing.
While many top universities -- including Harvard and Stanford Universities, along with many others -- were announcing partnerships and launching their first MOOCs, Yale sat back, watched, and evaluated.
In December, some eight months after Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor joined Coursera and three months after Brown, Columbia, Emory, and Vanderbilt Universities did the same, Yale’s Committee on Online Education, a faculty committee, submitted its online report and recommendations to the dean of Yale College. Though the report suggests that Yale investigate different MOOC platforms, there is no timeline for when the university, seemingly already late to the MOOC party, might select a company or start providing MOOCs.
Are MOOCs coming to the law school near you? Harvard law prof Glenn Cohen says maybe not:
We in the law school who use the Socratic method may be particularly insulated from the MOOC treatment since the interactivity is part of what is prized.
Which might be true except for the inconvenient facts that (1) the Socratic method is a crappy way of teaching and (2) law schools are not immune from the same economic forces affecting higher ed more generally. Indeed, if this year's huge drop in applications proves permanent, we may suddenyl find ourselves on the cutting edge of change.
Which leads me to ponder:
- How would UCLA make money off a MOOC?
- How would some of that money come my way?
- Would I make more money MOOCing than professing? I'm imagining here the "Stephen M Bainbridge School of Corporate Law" as a stand-alone business enterprise. Other than the damnable barriers to entry of the legal profession created by the bar, it could work....
- How would I teach a corporate law MOOC?
- Assuming I retire on schedule in 2023, will it have come to pass by then?
