Brian Sandberg: Historical Perspectives

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are already being used in high schools and middle schools in the United States. Many professors and teachers have serious concerns about the pedagogical value of these courses. Now, some MOOCs are raising new privacy concerns among students and parents.

Students in MOOCs often submit personal data and educational work that can be harvested, stored, and used by MOOC providers. Since these courses are often developed by or in partnership with private corporations, the storing and use of students’ information and work is worrisome.

An article by Caitlin Emma on “Online Education Run Amok?” delves into these privacy concerns and their political ramifications. According to Emma, “The people behind the online courses say the metrics they collect will help them better understand not just what students learn, but also how they learn. Less clear is the extent to which providers might profit from the information in other ways, be it by selling the data to other organizations or mining it themselves for marketing gold.”

Politico reports on the privacy concerns about MOOCs.

A new article on “The Value of a Shared Education” reflects on the importance of a common Gen Ed curriculum in higher eduation.

Judith Shapiro, former President of Barnard College, writes: “If we look at curricula, we see a trend toward proliferation. Courses and programs are constantly being added, while almost nothing goes away. Faculty members have felt a need, or desire, to have their teaching reflect the increasing accumulation of knowledge—in established fields, in relatively new fields, and in the interdisciplinary spaces between fields. This has led to a growing proportion of relatively narrow, specialized courses, creating a powerful centrifugal effect on the undergraduate academic experience.”

Curricular reforms are rather frequent on most college campuses, but they often involve tinkering with or adding to the Gen Ed core rather than reconceptualizing the common educational experience for undergraduate students.

Some recent curricular reforms have been grappling with digital research and teaching methods, prompting debates about how to incorporate digital approaches into new curricula.

My own university, Northern Illinois University, is currently going through a curricular reform process.  So, this article may be of interest to NIU students and faculty members.

Judith Shapiro, “The Value of a Shared Education” appears in The Chronicle of Higher Education.