Flip It

I've stayed away from posting about MOOCs, in part because my ongoing reaction amounts to not much more than "Why are we being told to do things that are antithetical to everything we've learned about effective pedagogy?"  But I do have a few words about Claire Potter's suggestions for MOOC nuking.

1) Do archival work: This supposes that there are archives available.  For example, Brockport has a handful of archives, but we're not a research repository by any remote stretch of the imagination.  The University of Rochester has much more available, but the library is about twenty-five minutes away when it isn't snowing, making it fine for a one-stop introduction to archival work (one of my colleagues has used it for that purpose), but not fine as the site for a regular course (putting to one side the U of R's potential opinions about us scheduling a class in their archives!).  You should be able to do something interesting with online manuscript material/ephemera, although it isn't quite the same experience--and one has to bear in mind that many students still don't have access to high-speed internet connections at home.

2) Pop culture and history: ...What does "small fee" mean, exactly? Small fee to whom? Some of us are not at campuses rolling in dough, or even flour. (Bringing in a filmmaker might work as a university-wide thing, but you'd need university-level funding for it.) 

3) Axe those surveys: On the one hand, I'm sympathetic to the basic concept, not least because we've been discussing this possibility in my own department.  On the other hand, the instrumentalism of this proposal--"If we believe that the purpose of the liberal arts requirement is to teach everyone the rudiments of critical thinking, would it not be a good idea to ask students preparing for a professional career to take a topical course in, say, the  History of Medicine, the History of the Office, the History of Finance, The History of the Oil Industry — rather than what we currently offer: comprehensive histories of the United States sliced in half at 1865, Western Civilization surveys and whatnot?"--puzzles me.    Our surveys are mostly at the 100 and 200 level, at a point when many of our students have only declared an intent to major, and an equally large number have yet to concretize their career plans.  (In fact, they aren't even eligible for most of our professional programs at this stage.)  The English department equivalent of this proposal (Medical Humanities, say) might draw a bunch of students, but not necessarily because it had anything to do with their futures.

More bluntly, many of our students are working full or part-time, have families or lengthy commutes, etc., and tend to schedule themselves not by interest, but, out of necessity, by time slot.  ("I can take classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays this semester.")  Obviously, a "sexy" course will attract more attention than poor Western Civ (or, in our case, World Lit), but that doesn't necessarily mean that a student working 40 hours per week is going to drop everything to take it, either.

In other words: these suggestions are not really aimed at a school like mine, whose students in any event would often not be well-served by the more impersonal MOOC enviroment.  They require a different kind of student who enters with a different skill-set and different circumstances, and a different university (or university location) with a rather different cash flow.