Armed with little more than video cameras and an Internet connection, a handful of innovators are tearing down the cloistered gates that have long enclosed elite higher education. Their strategy is simple: unite the pedagogy of a talented teacher with the ubiquity of a wireless signal.
But could an online course ever reproduce the depth and breadth of learning that goes on at the world’s best universities? This question would have provoked scoffs five years ago, but recent innovations have demonstrated that the virtues of the classroom can be matched online.
Enrolling in a university is by far the least cost-effective way to receive an elementary introduction to the academic disciplines. Virtually all of the material covered in Economics 1 or Math 3 at Dartmouth — courses that cost thousands of dollars in tuition — is laid out free of charge in bite-sized modules at Khan Academy, a website with hundreds of videos covering dozens of disciplines. And unlike your Math 3 professor, Sal Kahn has been praised by the likes of Bill Gates.
Suppose instead that you’re interested not in breadth, which is available at a public library, but in depth. It is true that abstract algebra, advanced econometrics and effective field theory are sophisticated topics that are taught best by Ph.D.’s, but that’s no reason to shell out $40,000 per year in tuition. Since the rapid rise of massive open online courses in 2012, accessing experts has required little more than opening a new browser tab. Recorded lectures from Harvard, Yale and Stanford courses on topics ranging from general relativity to the philosophy of death are now available to all at no cost.
Anyone who has participated in a university seminar will object that I have neglected the most important feature of a quality education. College is about much more than coldly accumulating information. It’s about batting around ideas, discussing lofty problems and placing values and assumptions in the crucible of heated debate. The best colleges facilitate interaction between students and faculty. That is how critical thinking is honed.
But this, too, is being recreated by online platforms. The Minerva Project, a for-profit venture that went live this August, is proposing to strip college down to the core. Classes composed of fewer than 20 students are conducted online, and lectures are eschewed in favor of 45-minute seminars that embrace science-backed pedagogy. By Minerva’s philosophy, class time should not be used to present information. There’s a MOOC for that, and students can watch it on their own time. Instead, classes become forums for dialogue and debate, and thinking well is prized over rote absorption. Perhaps most troubling for administrators, Minerva offers a selective four-year education at under half the cost of an elite degree.
A pressing question looms large over the rising tide of online learning platforms, one that should concern guardians of old traditions: how do universities fit into this shifting landscape? What does a university offer that the web cannot?
At its best, college offers fertile ground for scholarly exploration. Surrounded by the brightest minds, students are provided the rare opportunity to peer out at the cutting edge of human knowledge. The best colleges are centers for creativity, sustained by a community of scholars working collaboratively to better understand the world. Universities offer the facilities, communities and connections that can be read about online but certainly not replicated there.
MOOCs do not threaten this calling. They offer the tools to better achieve it.
For the first time in history, the university’s mission is no longer tethered to the task of delivering pre-packaged intellectual content. With the aid of MOOCs, professors can spend less time preparing lectures and more time blazing new trails and tackling hard problems. The interactions between students and faculty no longer need to be dominated by one-way monologues that idly rehash well-worn ideas. Class can become a period of exploration rather than stagnation, where professors and students work together to solve new problems rather than waste time recounting old solutions.
Online learning platforms do not spell doom for brick-and-mortar universities. They offer a path forward, one leading away from tired old traditions toward energized and immersive scholarship.