As open online courses evolve, Yale remains cautious


As more and more universities dive into the marketplace for massive open online courses, Yale remains tepid in its embrace of the medium, the Yale Daily News reports.

Known as MOOCs, these courses have exploded in popularity in recent years, with institutions around the country from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to the U.S. State Department taking a role in providing educational content to well over 5 million viewers internationally. But despite the University’s role as one of the initial leaders in providing free content to a global audience — Open Yale Courses, launched in 2007, are regarded as a predecessor to MOOCs — Yale has taken a step back from the market for online courses.

“A quality education represents a process of learning how to think, rather than the delivery of packets of information,” University President Peter Salovey said. “I’m as excited about online technologies as anyone else, but I want to focus on how to use them to engage students with faculty in a process of teaching and learning far more than I’m interested in simply conveying packets of information and giving people merit badges for having viewed them.”

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