A major problem with MOOCs is that they have a very low completion rate 7 to 9 percent for those offered by Coursera, a major player in the fledgling market. The perfect solution is to populate the courses with highly motivated, intelligent students Dartmouth students who would be willing and able to complete the courses. While this would not preclude students from outside the College from enrolling, Dartmouth would be able to offer enormous resources to its own students who are enrolled, making up for the deficiencies of purely online-based education.
Another problem, highlighted in an Inside Higher Ed article from last May by Joshua Kim, the director of learning and technology for the Dartmouth's Master in Health Care Delivery Science Program, is that online courses offer few opportunities for student-teacher interaction, since there are thousands of students and only one professor who is typically hundreds of miles away. This would not be a problem for students enrolled in Dartmouth MOOCs such students would have the privilege of attending the professor's office hours to visit him or her or even bumping into them on campus, just as if they were enrolled in any other class.
As with any other course, students would be free to drop. But since a MOOC would not count as one of the maximum four physical classes students are allowed to take, dropping it will not be nearly as painful. In addition, Dartmouth students would have the exclusive option of taking on-campus exams and writing papers for the courses, allowing for a traditional assessment of student capabilities and a resultant grade. For students who do not end up taking advantage of this, it would be rather like auditing a physical course. For those who do, the assessments would put a stamp of credibility on the resulting grade. While Kim argues that replacing the classroom in this manner constitutes "an abdication of our responsibilities as learning institutions," since it separates professors from students, by no means would Dartmouth students be deprived of the opportunity to meet with their professors. If anything, such meetings might be even more valuable for students who rarely get to speak with professors in person.
Another major advantage of MOOCs which cannot be understated is their lower cost compared to other methods of expanding education. While professors and their assistants will certainly require time and due compensation for recording lectures, preparing course syllabi and materials and grading papers, these collectively are a far less costly way to increase the breadth and depth of students' education than the construction and expansion of facilities savings that could and should be passed on to students and their families in the form of lower tuition fees. In addition, professors would be spared the time required to present the same lecture term after term and could focus on advising, mentoring and research instead.
Finally, while offering a selection of superb online offerings is far from the beaten path to prestige, it nonetheless increases the College's prominence and allows it to keep up with the Joneses in the higher education community. MOOCs may also allow the College to offer courses and faculty support for its students in departments where it lags behind its peers, such as Korean studies, but again without a massive commitment of resources. Ultimately, MOOCs would allow Dartmouth to reach out to the world and continue former College President Jim Yong Kim's efforts to globalize the college and heighten its profile without sacrificing its soul, the quality of its undergraduate education.
