MOOCs: The Future or a Flash in the Pan?

In recent years, the higher education sector has witnessed the emergence of a new phenomenon – massive open online courses, more commonly known as MOOCs. Opinion on the potential impact of these free courses is split.

On one hand:

Nathan Harden, author of

Gregory Nagy, professor of classical Greek literature at Harvard\n

Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist\n

Mike Sharples, chair of educational technology at the Open University (UK)\n

Sebastian Thrun, artificial-intelligence professor at Stanford, cofounder of MOOC platform Udacity\n

Professor Andrew Ng , chairman and cofounder of MOOC platform Coursera\n

Daphne Koller, professor of computer science at Stanford\n

Keith Devlin, professor of mathematics at Stanford\nPeter J. Burgard, professor of German at Harvard\n

David W. Wills, professor of religious history at Amherst College\n

Dr Sally Mapstone , pro-vice-chancellor for education at Oxford University\n

Timothy Burke, blogger\n

Jeremy Teitelbaum, dean of the University of Connecticut College of Liberal Arts and Sciences\n