The MOOCs and the Vice-Chancellor. (November 21, 2012)

In a November  20, 2012 thousand-word opinion piece in The Conversation, "Online learning glitch: MOOC flaws will be hard to resolve", the vice-chancellor of Monash University, Ed Byrne, answers the rhetorical question "Do online courses spell the end for the traditional university?" with a firm No.

Below we excerpt his reasoning.

[T]here are still a few issues that the MOOCs haven’t solved, and I’m not certain they’re going to be able to do so without significantly revising their model.

many of the disciplines universities offer have a practical as well as a theoretical component. Medicine, chemistry, fine art, engineering – all of these subjects require infrastructure, machinery or equipment that is beyond the means of an individual student.

The other major problem the MOOCs haven’t solved is assessment. It remains to be seen whether softer subject areas, like, say, politics, philosophy or the social sciences [can be properly assessed].

The problems with assessment point to a larger problem: accreditation. A university education has never just been about acquiring knowledge. It’s about being able to prove it.

Ultimately, purely online courses are unlikely to supplant real-world universities because sporadic online interaction will never be able to match the deep, rich experience of attending university in person... University is where you build your professional peer group and networks that will support you throughout the rest of your career.

[B]ut... introductory courses of the type that traditionally had five hundred students crammed into a lecture theatre are taught almost entirely online... That would free up teaching resources to improve the quality of the on-campus component... The face-to-face time becomes much more valuable, because it can be used to explore the ideas in greater depth and test the learning. While the basic learning material can be accessed before coming to class.

[Nevertheless] it is clear that universities are bound to adapt in some way to the possibilities that digital learning represents.