the real reason they get away with a lot of this rubbish is that most of us are too busy with other far more interesting and exciting things like research and teaching to have the time to refute every idiotic notion they espouse
In other words the faculty association gets run by faculty who aren't very busy doing the stuff that faculty is supposed to do. Unfortunately that's common in too many areas. Working hard means less time to play politics, so guess who runs the world.
Not that I'm convinced that the copyrights on their course material is something that needs to be protected. But I don't think it should belong to the schools either.
Ditto. A Creative Commons license would be ideal. There's a prof who posted below who already uses that.
But as I mentioned before, how wouldn't having multiple MOOC's for a given course satisfy the desire to have several different approaches to choose from? If anything it would improve the situation for a student. Didn't grok professor X's approach to physics 203, then just try professor Y's.
Good point, but the GP seemed to be talking about more cutting-edge grad level subjects. For intro level stuff the quality of the course (including the prof as a teacher, not a researcher) should be most important. I'm skeptical that that would necessarily have much to do with how fancy a university name is attached to it though.
I'm happy to see collaboration to create good course materials for intro classes, but I definitely think we'll take a huge step backward intellectually if all of these courses effectively become "the same" at every college.
I'm not worried that they'll only be one MOOC for physics 203. You don't need hundreds of them though, the way you have hundreds of colleges each with their own version of physics 203, even though they all pretty much teach the same thing. A handful of MOOC's should suffice for variety, just as you only need or have a handful of widely used textbooks for a given course.
I also think the importance of "taught by different people" and "interact with different faculty" is overblown at an undergraduate level. Note how your example of its value specifically refers to graduate students. Undergrads just don't interact that much with faculty and learn mostly the same thing you could learn at a hundred different schools. Graduate students are a completely different story.
And effectively we're penalizing those who tried to innovate by saying -- "Those who kept the crappy handout and offline textbook model can take that stuff with them to their new job as usual (which can actually serve as a great point to build online materials in the future), but those who innovated and used cool new educational materials in an online setting will lose those if they ever leave their job."
So put the materials under a Creative Commons license. A prof posting above already does.
I put all my material under a CC NC-BY-SA license.
Excellent! I was about to suggest this to someone below who said the real issue is whether profs retain the right to use their own materials if they go to another school, but you beat me to it by actually doing it.
This should actually be mandatory for anything created in part with taxpayer money (there is very little in academia that doesn't apply to). Like the results of scientific research, this sort of thing is a public good. It's already paid for in large part by taxpayers and students, so it should be freely available to everyone, not just rentiers. OTOH, as you point out, academics live and die by their reputation, and should retain credit for what they generate. Creative Commons licensing is ideal.
"Professors Say Massive Open Online Courses Threaten Academic Freedom" : LOL , more like threaten future royalties.
The mods here today are seriously into censorship. This is the 2nd post I've seen go from at least a +1 to a -1 for no good reason. Caustic doesn't mean troll or flamebait. The PP is obviously on-topic and expresses a view without any Slashdot style "you must be an idiot" or similar such "debate techniques".
One main difference is that teachers/professors are required to essentially do a very similar thing over and over and over again from semester to semester and year to year.
In other words it's repetitive and doesn't require much new work after you've taught the course a couple of times.
They are instead creating materials that will allow them to do their job better again and again from year to year.
I do the same thing in my job but I have no special rights to the stuff (acceptable since I get a salary, just like a professor).
I know that's a good part of why tuition at public universities have shot up (SUNY went from the student paying 25% to 75%), but is it the whole story? It doesn't explain the cost increases at private schools. I'd love to see a decent breakdown of the reasons for the increase in the total cost of running a university (i.e. total cost regardless of who is picking up the tab). All I've ever seen is a few hand-waving "this has become more expensive" without specifying any numbers, let alone giving a complete breakdown. Considering how many people this affects, I'm amazed I haven't seen decent reporting on this. The budgets for public universities anyway should be open to the public, so that's not the issue.
Yes, to keep that serf alive so you can work him to death.
Why did this get modded down from at least a +1 to a -1? It's a joke. Do the mods now lack a sense of humor in addition to being intolerant of different views?
Now, with MOOCs, universities are claiming ownership over much of the course materials created.
Boo hoo, you mean they might have to live under the same system as us peasants? That would be especially good for economics departments, where tenured profs preach about the wonders of "labor flexibility".
If somebody considers the university rather than the person important, then they're just buying a brand. Likely they have no real knowledge of the field. Alas, such people are often the decision makers.
The article also suggests that the push for MOOCs is coming because governments can no longer afford to provide college education
By governments do you mean governments in the US? I don't know if universities elsewhere have seen the same sort of insane inflation in costs that we've seen in the US.
by pushing to an online model, they can shrink the college sector. They still fulfill their responsibility of "educating people" - but they don't have to pay for all those expensive bits like college buildings and academics
If MOOC's do prove to be effective, then it's a good thing not to have to pay for all those expensive bits. The structure of universities is quite literally medieval. The main change since the middle ages is that they now only wear their (literally) medieval costumes on graduation day. It would be nice if in the 21st century we could find a more efficient way of doing things, like we have with almost every other part of the economy.
That seems more like the country having a civil war over the King violating the law, not a revolution.
The English do call it their Civil War, but I'd argue it was a revolution since they overthrew the existing government and instituted a new (though not necessarily better) form w/ Cromwell as Lord Protector. They get away w/ calling it a civil war instead of a revolution because they had an un-revolution (the Restoration) nine years later, so they figure it doesn't really count.
Anyone who actually grew up in the US knows better than that.
Does having been born and living my entire life in the US qualify as "actually grew up in the US"?
It is jingoistic
Wikipedia defines jingoism as "extreme patriotism in the form of aggressive foreign policy". Please indicate what part of the Pledge of Allegiance that applies to.
Slashdot Mirror
the real reason they get away with a lot of this rubbish is that most of us are too busy with other far more interesting and exciting things like research and teaching to have the time to refute every idiotic notion they espouse
In other words the faculty association gets run by faculty who aren't very busy doing the stuff that faculty is supposed to do. Unfortunately that's common in too many areas. Working hard means less time to play politics, so guess who runs the world.
Not that I'm convinced that the copyrights on their course material is something that needs to be protected. But I don't think it should belong to the schools either.
Ditto. A Creative Commons license would be ideal. There's a prof who posted below who already uses that.
But as I mentioned before, how wouldn't having multiple MOOC's for a given course satisfy the desire to have several different approaches to choose from? If anything it would improve the situation for a student. Didn't grok professor X's approach to physics 203, then just try professor Y's.
Even the posts complaining about censorship get modded down. They're thorough.
P.S. For a good example of this newfangled rebuttal stuff see Jane Q. Public below. It's nice to know that some Slashdotters are familiar with it.
It's because there isn't a "-1, Reading Comprehension FAIL" mod.
Believe that and I've got a bridge to sell you.
If you disagree with someone then rebut them. BTW, I do a lot of modding on Slashdot and I never mod a post down just because I disagree with it.
Good point, but the GP seemed to be talking about more cutting-edge grad level subjects. For intro level stuff the quality of the course (including the prof as a teacher, not a researcher) should be most important. I'm skeptical that that would necessarily have much to do with how fancy a university name is attached to it though.
The academics true fear: Online courses = less jobs in academia.
So obvious it shouldn't have to be said, but it does.
Freedom used provide Americans with best CHEAPEST health care in the world
Cite?
Freedom used to provide Americans arguably with best and cheapest education in the world
Cite?
Medical care would be falling in price
Evidence?
I'm happy to see collaboration to create good course materials for intro classes, but I definitely think we'll take a huge step backward intellectually if all of these courses effectively become "the same" at every college.
I'm not worried that they'll only be one MOOC for physics 203. You don't need hundreds of them though, the way you have hundreds of colleges each with their own version of physics 203, even though they all pretty much teach the same thing. A handful of MOOC's should suffice for variety, just as you only need or have a handful of widely used textbooks for a given course.
I also think the importance of "taught by different people" and "interact with different faculty" is overblown at an undergraduate level. Note how your example of its value specifically refers to graduate students. Undergrads just don't interact that much with faculty and learn mostly the same thing you could learn at a hundred different schools. Graduate students are a completely different story.
And effectively we're penalizing those who tried to innovate by saying -- "Those who kept the crappy handout and offline textbook model can take that stuff with them to their new job as usual (which can actually serve as a great point to build online materials in the future), but those who innovated and used cool new educational materials in an online setting will lose those if they ever leave their job."
So put the materials under a Creative Commons license. A prof posting above already does.
I put all my material under a CC NC-BY-SA license.
Excellent! I was about to suggest this to someone below who said the real issue is whether profs retain the right to use their own materials if they go to another school, but you beat me to it by actually doing it.
This should actually be mandatory for anything created in part with taxpayer money (there is very little in academia that doesn't apply to). Like the results of scientific research, this sort of thing is a public good. It's already paid for in large part by taxpayers and students, so it should be freely available to everyone, not just rentiers. OTOH, as you point out, academics live and die by their reputation, and should retain credit for what they generate. Creative Commons licensing is ideal.
"Professors Say Massive Open Online Courses Threaten Academic Freedom" : LOL , more like threaten future royalties.
The mods here today are seriously into censorship. This is the 2nd post I've seen go from at least a +1 to a -1 for no good reason. Caustic doesn't mean troll or flamebait. The PP is obviously on-topic and expresses a view without any Slashdot style "you must be an idiot" or similar such "debate techniques".
One main difference is that teachers/professors are required to essentially do a very similar thing over and over and over again from semester to semester and year to year.
In other words it's repetitive and doesn't require much new work after you've taught the course a couple of times.
They are instead creating materials that will allow them to do their job better again and again from year to year.
I do the same thing in my job but I have no special rights to the stuff (acceptable since I get a salary, just like a professor).
I don't know, professors have at least some recognized professional obligations for graduate students.
But what do they do for Boxing Day?
It's more that they no longer want to pay for it
I know that's a good part of why tuition at public universities have shot up (SUNY went from the student paying 25% to 75%), but is it the whole story? It doesn't explain the cost increases at private schools. I'd love to see a decent breakdown of the reasons for the increase in the total cost of running a university (i.e. total cost regardless of who is picking up the tab). All I've ever seen is a few hand-waving "this has become more expensive" without specifying any numbers, let alone giving a complete breakdown. Considering how many people this affects, I'm amazed I haven't seen decent reporting on this. The budgets for public universities anyway should be open to the public, so that's not the issue.
Yes, to keep that serf alive so you can work him to death.
Why did this get modded down from at least a +1 to a -1? It's a joke. Do the mods now lack a sense of humor in addition to being intolerant of different views?
The rest of us will be replaced by robots and software.
Because the Singularity is just around the corner. I know that's true because the Singularity has always been just around the corner.
Now, with MOOCs, universities are claiming ownership over much of the course materials created.
Boo hoo, you mean they might have to live under the same system as us peasants? That would be especially good for economics departments, where tenured profs preach about the wonders of "labor flexibility".
If somebody considers the university rather than the person important, then they're just buying a brand. Likely they have no real knowledge of the field. Alas, such people are often the decision makers.
The article also suggests that the push for MOOCs is coming because governments can no longer afford to provide college education
By governments do you mean governments in the US? I don't know if universities elsewhere have seen the same sort of insane inflation in costs that we've seen in the US.
by pushing to an online model, they can shrink the college sector. They still fulfill their responsibility of "educating people" - but they don't have to pay for all those expensive bits like college buildings and academics
If MOOC's do prove to be effective, then it's a good thing not to have to pay for all those expensive bits. The structure of universities is quite literally medieval. The main change since the middle ages is that they now only wear their (literally) medieval costumes on graduation day. It would be nice if in the 21st century we could find a more efficient way of doing things, like we have with almost every other part of the economy.
Serfdom might be a good term, except that under traditional serfdom the lord of the manor had some reciprocal obligations to the serf.
That seems more like the country having a civil war over the King violating the law, not a revolution.
The English do call it their Civil War, but I'd argue it was a revolution since they overthrew the existing government and instituted a new (though not necessarily better) form w/ Cromwell as Lord Protector. They get away w/ calling it a civil war instead of a revolution because they had an un-revolution (the Restoration) nine years later, so they figure it doesn't really count.
Anyone who actually grew up in the US knows better than that.
Does having been born and living my entire life in the US qualify as "actually grew up in the US"?
It is jingoistic
Wikipedia defines jingoism as "extreme patriotism in the form of aggressive foreign policy". Please indicate what part of the Pledge of Allegiance that applies to.
nobody else does anything remotely like it
Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag of South Korea
Pledge of Allegiance to the Philippine Flag
The "Judean People's Front" are traitors, not like the People's Front of Judea.