A People’s History of MOOCs | Library Babel Fish

"It struck me how much the arguments made for MOOCs are similar to the public library movement of the 19^th century. MOOCs are for the people, they are meant to spread knowledge, they help the poor and disenfranchised get a leg up by assimilating a body of knowledge created by great minds. They are free to all and a terrific opportunity to advance the reputation of that site of learning.

But there is a difference. MOOCs are not, like Boston’s library, founded by the public for civic purposes. They are not built by the people. They are gifts from great institutions to an invisible audience across for-profit platforms that will eventually have to come up with a steady revenue stream to keep going.  They incorporate the entrepreneurial spirit of tech startups which is, at its heart, very much about products, markets,  and individual desires. They fuse the intellectual star power of TED talks with the traditional authority of the universities involved, add a dose of educational theory, and mix in the fizzy, intoxicating momentum of the latest social media platform...."