In a MOOC, however, nobody cares how you feel when you stop showing up, any more than the exercise bike feels compassion for your lack of persistence. The MOOC is the degree zero of the pastoral tradition.
Online limitations
In a sense, anything available online and free is a good thing for lots of people, but our obligation as educators is to see that the material is understood. We have responsibilities for the time that we occupy the attention of our students and the hopes that they put into their studies.
At its core, the MOOC assumes that students are self-regulated learners who already have the academic and ICT skills necessary to succeed at study. But all students are people whom we have to look after academically; and in this duty of care, the MOOC has everything counting against it.
This blog post originally appeared on the blog The Conversation.
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