MOOC's - The Runaway Trains [Not]

In an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education, by Professor Rob Jenkins, apparently, administrators and politicians are to blame for the rise of online course offerings and the runaway train threatens to destroy academia, or those who oppose MOOC's, technology, and change in general. I am respectful of the author's opinion, as not all faculty fully understand the potential for online courses to enhance the lives of students with various barriers from receiving face to face instruction. Many traditional or non-technology conforming faculty confuse the purpose of online courses with the reality of enrollments and infrastructure.

First off, the design philosophy of online courses began as a mechanism for colleges to grant students an education that were unable to meet at a specific location and broaden their presence internationally. In addition, online courses afford students who have full-time work obligations, care for family, or telecommuters to receive continuing education. Today, the demand for continuing education online may be found in disciplines such as Medicine, Physics, Chemistry and Engineering.

Most importantly, the goal of raising enrollments and providing more access to education in society is a good thing, and yet, opponents of technology in education consistently forget this idea. A democratic republic functions better with a more educated population. Since when did open access become a negative aspect of education? Should our goals not be to advance access to education and promote collaboration in research with technology? It is disingenuous to label MOOC'S a failure or a "flavor of the month" concept before we even have years of researching testing the benefits/disadvantages compared to traditional instruction.

The misguided fears that many proponents of traditional instruction carry stems from an impending sense of doom that technology will destroy everything that has been built from previous scholarship. Unfortunately, fear mongering and blaming politicians/administrators will become stale when online students praise the MOOC instruction for creativity, visual engagement and enhance the learning experience to fit a personalized schedule. teachers need to examine the realistic nature of MOOC's, at most it will become part of an online department within a college of education. The likelihood of MOOC's replacing courses full time are slim to none, so let's take it easy on the rhetoric and have a nice glass of reality instead.