Therefore, making this kind of argument simply serves as a way to shut down all discussion of the subject, which will only breed resentment. Moreover, plenty of us believe that by looking out for our interests we are looking out for students and learning. Since profs gotta eat, they’re going to worry about eating whether you tell them they’re allowed to or not. However, I want to point out to Phil’s clients that they can’t just wish the class divide away. Whenever Phil makes that infuriating argument, I usually respond with some variation of “profs gotta eat.” Not surprisingly that argument works really well on other profs, but not so well on Phil. Yet this is precisely what the two quotes following mine in that New York Times article from last week try to do. If people with access to power want to convince recalcitrant professors to accept MOOCs, arguing that they must be because this must be is a terrible idea. In the context of the NY Times article, that positioning was accurate however, in Jonathan’s follow-up blog post, he misinterprets my meaning. Perhaps to the dismay of Jonathan’s Aunt Nancy, my comments were positioned as refuting his comments. “Our starting point ought to be what students need and whether this is an effective form of learning.” “The problem with this MOOC-as-labor-issue argument is that it has no place for students and learning,” said Phil Hill, an education technology consultant. Jonathan Rees, a history professor at Colorado State University at Pueblo, who has written critically about MOOCs, said their spread is likely to lead to a three-tiered world, with a few high-status “super professors” for whom the courses provide both status and royalties a larger pool of tenured professors who continue to teach their regular in-person classes until they retire and “a huge army of adjuncts and teaching assistants,” whose jobs will be vulnerable to online competition. A couple of weeks ago I was interviewed for an article in the NY Times about recent pushback against MOOCs.
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