One of my Phd students is studying how parents make decisions about education for their children (you can participate in his survey here). We economists treat this as a problem of investment under uncertainty…
For the past twenty years, I’ve heard this question asked many times about online education. It might be tempting for enthusiasts to say “of course it is good,” but I see this as a kind of “trick question…
Everyday, thousands of students around the world perch themselves in front of computer screens in homes, libraries, coffee shops, and Internet cafes to take a massive open online course (MOOC). It’s no…
It has been suggested that, with care and dedication, you can assemble a Masters of Business Administration for free. Perhaps unsurprisingly for those in the know, the idea hasn’t caught on. When leading…
If you have studied an online course at a university over the past couple of decades, you’ve probably already experienced a SPOC, or Small Private Online Course. SPOC is a new term for an old concept…
Ever since the invention of the printed word, academics have been arguing about the proper place of technology in teaching. On one side are those who I’ll call the traditionalists who insist on the primacy…
In the mid-1980s as a further education lecturer I was mocked by some more traditional colleagues for using “lantern slides”, their term for the then newfangled technology of the overhead projector, or…
Think of a university, any university. Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard or Yale may spring to mind. Or your local university, or the one you or someone you know attended. I’m fairly sure that the University…
Over the past couple of years, massive open online courses (MOOCs) have taken the academic world by storm. Despite much debate about whether the idea of running free online courses for everyone is both…
The belief that technology can automate education and replace teachers is pervasive. Framed in calls for greater efficiency, this belief is present in today’s educational innovations, reform endeavours…
Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, took the world by storm in 2012. After years of experimentation at the fringes of higher education, prestigious universities from around the world progressively surged…
For the past couple of years Australian universities’ enthusiasm for online learning has increased, following the lead of international universities in realising the potential of MOOCs to replace traditional…
As MOOC mania approached its peak in 2012, Anant Agarwal, the president of the Massive Open Online Course platform edX, claimed: Online education for students around the world will be the next big thing…
One often sees news stories about how changes in information technology are killing off different industries. Newspapers are read online rather than in print, and who bought a book in a physical shop lately…
As another teachers’ strike looms on July 10 it is worth setting out the reasons that teachers are unhappy with their profession. It’s not just because of conditions of service, pay, and pensions. Teaching…
The founder of free online learning platform edX, set up by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has spoken out against the US State department’s decision to block people in Iran…
With technology changing the landscape of higher education, The Conversation is running a series “Re-imagining the Campus” on the future of campus learning. Here, Tom Cochrane outlines how technology is…