{"id":12028,"date":"2012-11-20T10:33:11","date_gmt":"2012-11-20T15:33:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecollegefix.com\/?p=12028"},"modified":"2015-05-28T17:32:15","modified_gmt":"2015-05-28T21:32:15","slug":"future-of-college-could-be-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thecollegefix.com\/future-of-college-could-be-online\/","title":{"rendered":"Future of College Could Be Online"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via the New York Times<\/em><\/p>\n

Teaching \u00a0Introduction to Sociology<\/a> is almost second nature to Mitchell Duneier, a professor at Princeton: he has taught it 30 times, and a textbook he co-wrote is in its eighth edition. But last summer, as he transformed the class into a free online course, he had to grapple with some brand-new questions: Where should he focus his gaze while a camera recorded the lectures? How could the 40,000 students who enrolled online share their ideas? And how would he know what they were learning?<\/p>\n

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In many ways, the arc of Professor Duneier\u2019s evolution, from professor in a lecture hall to online instructor of tens of thousands, reflects a larger movement, one with the potential to transform higher education. Already, a handful of companies are offering elite college-level instruction \u2014 once available to only a select few, on campus, at great cost \u2014 free, to anyone with an Internet connection.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Moreover, these massive open online courses, or MOOCs, harness the power of their huge enrollments to teach in new ways, applying crowd-sourcing technology to discussion forums and grading and enabling professors to use online lectures and reserve on-campus class time for interaction with students…<\/p>\n

No one knows just how these massive courses will evolve, but their appeal to a broad audience is unquestioned: retirees in Indiana see them as a route to lifelong learning, students in India as their only lifeline to college-level work.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/em>Read the full story here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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