The document discusses the history and evolution of massive open online courses (MOOCs). It notes early predictions about how technology would revolutionize education, such as allowing students more freedom over their learning. However, many early efforts to implement online and distance education, such as Fathom, struggled financially. While MOOCs grew rapidly in the early 2010s, expectations about their financial viability and impact on universities were often unrealistic. The document advocates that universities focus on their educational niche and consider outsourcing non-core functions, to adapt to changes in higher education.

1. Who’s afraid of the
big bad MOOC?
pic.twitter.com/eeH9Ip1S

2. @SAlexander_UTS

3. Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/05/France_in_XXI_Century._School.jpg/1024px-France_in_XXI_Century._School.jpg
1900 prediction for using technology
in education in France in 2000

4. 1970s
Teaching
machines
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bostworld/2152048526/

5. http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/?irn=156414

6. Claims….
For students:
• freedom to follow own path of learning
• work at own pace in own time
• richer materials
• automatic measurement of progress

7. Claims...
• makes teaching and learning richer and more
effective
• expands time, place and pace of education
• improves quality of interaction
• highly motivating for students and teachers

8. Claims...
• “personal computers will revolutionise society
and will create powerful new opportunities for
those who can handle them”
• “The information superhighway will
revolutionise society and will create powerful
new opportunities for those who can handle
it”

9. http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/tweeting-students-earn-higher-grades-than-others-in-classroom-experiment/28172

10. Higher Education Supplement,
The Australian
1994-2000

11. Total number of articles
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001

12. • "The Internet removes any necessity for
academics and researchers to travel to
conferences in expensive locations to exchange
views".
20 March, 1996, p22

13. Logan lends weight to floating of
Universities
VC of Monash "Why should students any
longer be satisfied with hearing second or
third hand the latest theory of some world
academic leader when it is now technically
possible to hear and see them directly “
August, 1996

14. ‘Credible’ e-uni planned
• Article describing the launch of an elite education
service in Britain – boxmind
• Brian Walden, former Labour MP said “There is nothing
more interesting than a talking head. I often hear it said
the moderns are quite different from previous
generations and that unless something is visual they
lose their concentration after 15 seconds. I think that is
quite wrong. There are still quite enough people at
Oxbridge who are capable of lecturing. If necessary
they can learn from conference speakers and break up
their talks with graphs”
October, 2000

19. Fathom
• "The people who committed themselves to this
believed that the Internet universe would expand at a
certain rate and with a certain profile, and it didn't
happen," Professor Richard Bulliet said. "It was a
gamble, and it didn't work out. I don't think there
was anything you could point to that would have
made it work."
Columbia Daily Spectator, January 27, 2003

20. Fathom
• “Well that's a nice rationalization, but the
numbers (number of web sites, number of
web users, page hits) don't bear it out. What
sunk Fathom was that students weren't
willing to pay the prices required to make
the investment-heavy initiative profitable.
And why should they?”
OL Weekly, Stephen Downes, 31 January, 2003

21. New York Times
• “The notion was that there were prospective students out there, far
beyond the university's walls, for whom distance education was the
answer. Whether they were 18-year-olds seeking college degrees or
50-year-olds longing to sound smart at cocktail parties, students
would flock to the Web by the tens of thousands, paying tuitions
comparable to those charged in the bricks-and-mortarboard world -
- or so the thinking went….
• 'University presidents got dollars in their eyes and figured the way
the university was going to ride the dot-com wave was through
distance learning,'' said Lev S. Gonick, vice president for information
services and chief information officer at Case Western Reserve
University in Cleveland. ''They got swept up.''

22. NYT (cont)
• business models were flawed - university administrators did
not fully understand the cost of entering the market.
• 'expensive to do this stuff - costs hundreds of thousands of
dollars to build a course well.
– creating video,
– securing content rights and
– paying the faculty member who teaches it.
• ''Right now we're trying to figure out how to make it work
intellectually,'' he said, ''and we have to figure out later how
to make it work financially. If anyone had asked us how
anyone was going to make the university work financially as
the first question asked, it would never have been built.''
Michael Crow, executive vice provost at Columbia.

23. http://www.flickr.com/photos/mathplourde/8620174342/

24. Source: http://chronicle.com/article/Major-Players-in-the-MOOC/138817

25. Things take longer to happen than
you think they will
and then …
they happen faster than you think
they could.
Larry Summers
Former President, Harvard

26. ⬆costof higher education
⬇Govt funding
? Is the investment worth it
disaggregation

29. Cost

30. The Ernst & Young report: 3 models for
universities to survive to 2025:
• Stay with the status quo, but significantly
streamline their operations;
• Become a “niche dominator,” i.e., stop trying to
be all things to all students and focus on one or a
few niches where they have a chance of winning
greater market share;
• Become “transformers” in which they redefine
what it means to be who they are, create new
markets for their products, and outsource much
of their operations.

32. What students want
Source: Andrew Norton, The Grattan Institute

33. What students want
Source: Andrew Norton, The Grattan Institute
✔ ✔
✔ ✔
✔ ✔
✔

34. What students want
Source: Andrew Norton, The Grattan Institute
✔
✔
✔✔

37. Any university that can be
replaced by a MOOC
should be

38. Source: College Board, US Department of Education Census Bureau and Citi Research.
Note tuition and earnings weighted in 2010$s, tuition and fees enrolment weighted

39. Source: http://www.graduatecareers.com.au/research/surveys/graduateoutlooksurvey/gos12_report_final-3/

43. What students want (summary)
• Engaging, interactive F2F classes + podcasts of
them
• More F2F time with academics
• More feedback (+faster turnaround)
• When casual academics are employed, they
should be paid more (to attend all classes etc)
• Faster turnaround on email and UTSOnline
questions
• Bring back office hours
Big $ to implement

44. Planned Enrolments Actual Enrolled Actual Attended
Planned enrolments
Max. room capacity
All Enrolled students
Max. room capacity
All Attending students
Max. room capacity
Best case scenario at
100% attendance
Best case scenario at
100% attendance
83%
72%
51%
81%
67%
31%
Start of Semester (Semester 2)
End of Semester (Semester 1)

45. Castells
• ”the history of technology is that users are the
key producers of the technology, by adapting
it to their uses and values, and ultimately
transforming the technology itself".
• We learn about technology by using it and
producing - feedback between the diffusion of
technology and its enhancement

46. Evolution of the
telephone
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sciencemuseum/3459424326/

47. Invention of telephone 1876
• early demonstrations
– Watson singing to a distant
audience
– news broadcasts
– symphony broadcast
– train arrivals
– broadcast of lullabies to put
children to sleep
• active discouragement of
use in social communication

48. Predictions - the telephone:
• will be used for shopping;
• will increase productivity;
• reduces the need to travel;
• reduces loneliness;
• provides a bond for communities;
• will stimulate interest in Science;
• will facilitate dissemination of knowledge;
• will foster world peace.

49. Fischer, C.S. (1992) America Calling: A Social History of the telephone to 1940. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
the telephone did not alter the conditions of
daily life
“Instead Americans used it to more
vigorously pursue their
characteristic ways of life.”

50. Contemporary slogan

51. Source: http://t.co/rKTiKN4pGp

55. Any university that can be
replaced by a MOOC
should be

56. LEARNING
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groupwork