gpmt

Although posted already a week ago, this is too important a scoop to miss. According to Phil Hill, Coursera's moving into the courseware business is a reflection of a number of different things. First, according to Coursera's Daphne Koller it is prompted by their desire to cater more for HE students' initial education than for professionals who seek to develop themselves. But speculates Phil Hill, another dominant reason could be the desire of the venture capitalists to find a revenue model. Courseware is like books, it allows universities to use them and turn them into genuine course by putting a wrapper around them, i.e. by assigning teachers to them, fitting them into a curriculum, giving credits for them. 

Courseware as a notion is at least 20 years old (see my previous Scoop http://sco.lt/4k2TeD). In that sense, Coursera's move is a step back. It brings MOOCs back into the fold of HE as we know it; the claim that MOOCs are a disrupting innovation that makes obsolete almost all universities but a few elite ones (as suggested by among others Sebastian Thrun) immediately falls flat. To me, this is a very welcome move, one that removes the hype and gives us back a sense of proportion, enough to let educational professionals (rather than news papers and Silicon Valley gurus) decide on how MOOCs are going to be useful to improve education across the globe. (@pbsloep)

A step for chasing profit