Thankyou Rhrosty

For your deep concern for my welfare.

It was not easy you know. Being a sexual plaything. Quite demeaning.

Remote female friend enters my monk like garret. A quick kiss then she strips 1 minute 10 seconds later.

And I wasn't even warmed up.

I won't go on. But you can imagine what we put-upon males have to go through at uni.

Pete

Jason Potts writes that MOOCs are "not dating sites". Fixed: a team of students I mentored has built a social network, just for university students. ;-)

More seriously, on-line courses can support social interaction. Many MOOCS do not cover these social aspects well, not because the technology can't support it, but because the courses have not been well designed by competent instructional designers.

The case for MOOCs is not, as Professor Potts suggests "they can deliver the same educational services, but at a fraction of the cost". Distance education (DE) courses, have existed for more than one hundred years, but these don't provide the same education and they are not necessarily much cheaper. They provide access to a different form of education (in some ways better) for people who would otherwise not have access.

Professor Potts seems to think that MOOCs are cheap and easy. However, very few people ever finish a MOOC and one will not get you a university degree. Some of providers offer a "professional" program, but if you add up the cost of all the courses required, it is not necessarily cheaper than a conventional higher education program.

The real story is that on-line tools are already being used to supplement most university programs in Australia. In the next few years, the norm will be on-line courses, supplemented with classes. This will be a challenge for Australian universities. Torrens University Australia is part of Laureate International Universities, which already provides education on-line to 800,000 students.

Discussing the viability of on-line courses seems outdated, like discussing the benefits of email was fifteen years ago. Some people "got it" and the rest had a few years to catch up. I started delivering on-line university courses in 2009 and, apart from the occasional guest lecture, have not been back in front of a class since then. The idea that myself and my students would have to arrange to assemble somewhere in the world, just so that I could talk at them for an hour sounds weird (and research shows not an effective teaching technique).

More at: http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/2015/02/on-line-courses-can-support-social.html