One of the big questions currently facing MOOCs is whether some subjects like the humanities are poorly suited to the MOOC medium. Recently, we saw professors from the department of philosophy at San Jose State University publicly reject using Harvard professor Michael Sandel's edX course "Justice" because "the thought of the exact same social justice course being taught in various philosophy departments across the country is downright scary—something out of a dystopian novel. [...] Diversity in schools of thought and plurality of points of view are at the heart of liberal education.”
Like many other institutions of higher education, Stanford University is facing the challenge of how to best teach MOOCs. Unlike most other schools, however, Stanford is one of the hubs of the MOOC craze, with two professors founding Coursera and another professor founding Udacity. To get a sense of how campus educators feel about the in-person classroom versus the online classroom, The Stanford Daily spoke with the some of the school's leading educators about whether they think MOOCs replicate the seminar experience and effectively teach the humanities. Here are some of the perspectives shared in the article:
Art history professor Alexander Nemerov:
“I think that part of the beauty of [giving a lecture] is how ephemeral it is. I feel that the lecture is there for the people who are in the class. That is to say that it’s based on a face-to-face interaction between people all in one room. I don’t know how I feel about taking out the personal quality of it.”
“I know that I’ll continue to believe in the importance of public lectures, public speaking, the classroom experience. It would be a sad day for me if it were all sort of farmed out and just made into online, on-demand education. It would seem that something very human would have been lost in that.”
Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences Richard Saller:
“The humanities have to deal with ambiguity [and] with multiple answers. The humanities, I think, benefit hugely from the exchange of different points of view [and] different arguments.”
“I guess my hunch is that the kinds of platforms that are available now can provide a forum for exchange among students with different ideas. But I doubt that that will come anywhere near the quality that we have in our introductory seminars.”
Chair of the English department Gavin Jones:
“I think it’s very easy for people to see the humanities as either against [online education] or skeptical of it, and I think you need some healthy skepticism. I don’t think all of it is good. But it’s a question of recognizing what is good about it and using that to improve the educational resources and the pedagogical mission that already exist.”
Coursera co-founder and computer science professor Daphne Koller:
“I think if you use computer-based grading, clearly you need to restrict the dimensions to things that more or less have a right answer or several right answers."
"I think that humanities classes can be taught incredibly effectively online."
Coursera co-founder and computer science professor Andrew Ng:
“I think there are certain seminar classes where an instructor walks around a room, very discussion-based courses—I think we’re still figuring out the technology of how to offer that. An online discussion forum is different. It is definitely different… I think we still have a long way to go, frankly, to simulate more of the average classroom discussion.”
On peer grading and feedback: “Realistically, I have to admit that that feedback is not as insightful as is [the feedback of] a highly skilled professor. On the flip side, it’s also useful to get five different perspectives.”
Senior associate dean for the humanities and arts Debra Satz:
“I think that writing is one of the most important skills that people learn in the humanities, and, in my experience, it tends to happen by people going line by line over essays and giving detailed feedback. And that’s unlikely to happen in a course that has 150,000 students.”
“I think there’s some benefit to peer grading, but it’s different than having your work read by an expert.”
“One of the most important things is to not just deliver information [to students] but to teach them how to reason. And if we don’t teach our students how to make knowledge, not just how to consume knowledge, then we’re not doing what higher education is supposed to do.”
Hoover Institution senior fellow Larry Diamond:
“[Online education] is going to change higher education, and great universities are going have to adapt,” he said. “[But] we want to be sure we don’t lose what’s precious and irreplaceable about the undergraduate educational experience by becoming too infatuated with technology.”