Outsourcing Scholarship

Massive Open Online Courses (aka MOOCs) have, surprisingly, been around since the 19th century. Back in their early beginnings, what we now call MOOCs were called distance education and they started, specifically, as correspondance courses with Sir Isaac Pitman, who taught shorthand by mail (1870). Other distance curriculum soon followed (secretary school, nursing, etc.) Distance education was formally recognized in 1883 when Chautauqua College of Liberal Arts in New York granted degrees to students who completed correspondence education. When we hear the term “distance education” today, we probably do not think back to a time shortly after the Civil War.

MOOCs as we currently know them (computer/internet-mediated) have been around since 2008. The first one was titled "Connectivism and Connected Knowledge" by Stephen Downes and George Siemens in Canada. Since then MOOCs have spread around the world and are offered by renowned universities, including my own current school - University of Colorado. Recently, CU launched a MOOC with 16,000 students in order to outsource scholarship and make research a collective effort. Having massive open online courses with so many students (and so little scholars/professors) is truly democratizing education and removing scholarship from the ivory tower. This is true connectivism in action.

Resources:

A Short History of MOOCs and Distance Learning | MOOC News & Reviews. (2013). Retreived from http://moocnewsandreviews.com/a-short-history-of-moocs-and-distance-learning/

Gogos, R. (August 15, 2013). A brief history of elearning (infographic). eFront Learning. Retrieved from:

http://www.efrontlearning.net/blog/2013/08/a-brief-history-of-elearning-infographic.html