Saturday, February 9, 2013

MOOCs and the Unknown


MOOCs - Massive Open Online Courses - have fed hundreds of thousands of knowledge-hungry people around the globe. Stanford University's MOOCs program has taught open online courses to tens of thousands students per course, and has 2.5 million enrollees from nearly every country in the world. The students hear a lecturer, and also interact with each other in digital social networks that facilitate their mastery of the material and their integration into global communities of the knowledgable. The internet, and its MOOC realizations, extend the democratization of knowledge to a scale unimagined by early pioneers of workers' study groups or public universities. MOOCs open the market of ideas and knowledge to everyone, from the preacher of esoteric spirituality to the teacher of esoteric computer languages. It's all there, all you need is a browser.

The internet is a facilitating technology, like the invention of writing or the printing press, and its impacts may be as revolutionary. MOOCs are here to stay, like the sun to govern by day and the moon by night, and we can see that it is good. But it also has limitations, and these we must begin to understand.

Education depends on the creation and transfer of knowledge. Insight, invention, and discovery underlay the creation of knowledge, and they must precede the transfer of knowledge. MOOCs enable learners to sit at the feet of the world's greatest creators of knowledge.

But the distinction between creation and transfer of knowledge is necessarily blurred in the process of education itself. Deep and meaningful education is the creation of knowledge in the mind of the learner. Education is not the transfer of digital bits between electronic storage devices. Education is the creation or discovery by the learner of thoughts that previously did not exist in his mind. One can transfer facts per se, but if this is done without creative insight by the learner it is no more than Huck Finn's learning "the multiplication table up to six times seven is thirty-five".

Invention, discovery and creation occur in the realm of the unknown; we cannot know what will be created until it appears. Two central unknowns dominate the process of education, one in the teacher's mind and one in the student's.

The teacher cannot know what questions the student will ask. Past experience is a guide, but the universe of possible questions is unbounded, and the better the student, the more unpredictable the questions. The teacher should respond to these questions because they are the fruitful meristem of the student's growing understanding. The student's questions are the teacher's guide into the student's mind. Without them the teacher can only guess how to reach the learner. The most effective teacher will personalize his interaction with the learner by responding to the student's questions.

The student cannot know the substance of what the teacher will teach; that's precisely why the student has come to the teacher. In extreme cases - of really deep and mind-altering learning - the student will not even understand the teacher's words until they are repeated again and again in new and different ways. The meanings of words come from context. A word means one thing and not another because we use that word in this way and not that. The student gropes to find out how the teacher uses words, concepts and tools of thought. The most effective learning occurs when the student can connect the new meanings to his existing mental contexts. The student cannot always know what contexts will be evoked by his learning.

As an interim summary, learning can take place only if there is a gap of knowledge between teacher and student. This knowledge gap induces uncertainties on both sides. Effective teaching and learning occur by personalized interaction to dispel these uncertainties, to fill the gap, and to complete the transfer of knowledge.

We can now appreciate the most serious pedagogic limitation of MOOCs as a tool for education. Mass education is democratic, and MOOCs are far more democratic than any previous mode. This democracy creates a basic tension. The more democratic a mode of communication, the less personalized it is because of its massiveness. The less personalized a communication, the less effective it is pedagogically. The gap of the unknown that separates teacher and learner is greatest in massively democratic education.

Socrates inveighed against the writing of books. They are too impersonal and immutable. They offer too little room for Socratic mid-wifery of wisdom, in which knowledge comes from dialog. Socrates wanted to touch his students' souls, and because each soul is unique, no book can bridge the gap. Books can at best jog the memory of learners who have already been enlightened. Socrates would probably not have liked MOOCs either, and for similar reasons.

Nonetheless, Socrates might have preferred MOOCs over books because the mode of communication is different. Books approach the learner through writing, and induce him to write in response. In contrast, MOOCs approach the learner through speech, and induce him to speak in response. Speech, for Socrates, is personal and interactive; speech is the road to the soul. Spoken bilateral interaction cannot occur between a teacher and 20 thousand online learners spread over time and space. That format is the ultimate insult to Socratic learning. On the other hand, the networking that can accompany a MOOC may possibly facilitate the internalization of the teacher's message even more effectively than a one-on-one tutorial. Fast and multi-personal, online chats and other networking can help the learners to rapidly find their own mental contexts for assimilating and modifying the teacher's message.

Many people have complained that the internet undermines the permanence of the written word. No document is final if it's on the web. Socrates might have approved, and this might be the greatest strength of the MOOC: no course ever ends and no lecture is really final. If MOOCs really are democratic then they cannot be controlled. The discovery of knowledge, like the stars in their orbits, is forever on-going, with occasional supernovas that brighten the heavens. The creation of knowledge will never end because the unknown is limitless. If MOOCs facilitate this creation, then they are good. 

5 comments:

  1. Wonderful.
    I will start with saying that as for now - I am very much pro the idea of democratizing and internationally enabling lectures through the Internet. I believe socrates was right when he said that these form of education do not compare to the live dialog for of a small class, but let us not forget that: 1. many classrooms today are not that small anyway, and 2. with small classrooms your reach is far far smaller, ergo, you will do a wonderful job sharpening young minds, but many potential minds would not even know of that option.

    I would like to bring up another concern regarding MOOCs though. My only fear is that the vast veriaty in MOOCs will expose the students to a choice overload (paradox of choice), and by doing so decrease their satisfaction and perforance, much like what (in my opinion) happend in the dating world these last 10 years with the introduction of online dating websites. But as I said - All and all, it sounds like a good idea, for now.

    And one last thing regarding MOOCs: for all you Seinfeld fans out there - I believe it was the MOOPs...

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQzW73WRrYM

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  2. Dear Yakov, in "Transfer processes" terminology, Momentum Heat and Mass transfer, you are talking about the driving forces, resistance to transfer or transfer coefficients, fluxes and more.... Except for radiation, all familiar rules need the transfer medium and a good contact between the phases...
    Rafi Semiat

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  4. It's great to see three new commenters on the site, the last several posts were commented only by myself and by somebody in Holland whose comments I could seldom decipher (even thogugh I always was able to understand and appreciate Yakov's blogs)

    PS Itay Sisso, as not only a huge fan but also amateur Seinfeld Authority, I appreciated your reference. The link did not work, but I am very aware of the episode (and all the 150 or so others), have seen each more than once, and easily remember the dialogues..

    Just a minor correction: It's Moops, not MOOPS!

    I did not yet have the time to read this blog, sorry Yakov. But I did find the time to attend an excellent seminar on the development of alphabets two days ago. I have to go teach a class now, but more on this later.

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