The article, "Beyond MOOCs: Is IT Creating a New, Connected Age?" is from a 2013 Educase Sprint Conference. This article talks about the growing availability of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Classrooms) and what types of technological higher education advances can be created beyond them. It includes quotes from different people and describes why MOOCs won't cut it for very long. The concept of a massive online classroom that is open to anyone has appealed to many people in the last few years. Students are able to receive feedback quickly from automated messages and are able to go through the curriculum at their own pace, whether it takes 2 weeks or 20. However, many universities are trying to improve MOOCs and come up with new technological classrooms because many problems have started to arise, whether it be the lack of income from the classrooms or figuring out what information should be licensed and what part of the classroom should be outsourced.
I found this article interesting because I had never heard of MOOCs before. I think it is cool that they are creating classrooms for the more tech-savvy students, or the ones that do not want to sit down for a lecture. However, I have some reservations about it. With these things, there is no kind of personal quality. Also, they eliminate the need for a teacher because everything is automated. What will happen to the teaching profession if all universities switch to this type of technology? If the universities switch, who's to say the high schools, middle schools and elementary schools won't switch also?
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