MOOCs Feature in This Week's Nature.

For TFW readers who have access to Nature the July 18, 2013 issue (Volume 799, Issue 7458) contains the following articles with sober assessments of the MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) present and future:

• Education online: The virtual lab: Confronted with the explosive popularity of online learning, researchers are seeking new ways to teach the practical skills of science.

      The academic world is in upheaval over MOOCs: massive open online courses that make university lectures available to tens of thousands of students at a time. For roughly a year, universities around the world have been rushing to partner with the major MOOC companies in a move that many believe could revolutionize higher education (see Nature 495, 160–163; 2013). But for many people working in education, MOOCs do not yet take the revolution far enough.
  

• Digital learning: Look, then leap: Massive open online courses can make higher education more accessible, immersive and comprehensive — if they are deployed with due caution, says Michael M. Crow.
      The response by many in academia and the media to massive open online courses (MOOCs) that make content freely accessible to millions of learners is reminiscent of the hysteria with which alien invaders were met in the pulp science-fiction films of the 1950s. Folks fear the unknown. More reasoned reception was expressed in a highly publicized open letter sent in April from members of the philosophy department at San José State University in California to Michael Sandel, a professor of government at Harvard University
  

• Education: Online on-ramps: Giving scientists greater access to conceptual and technical tuition through massive open online courses will aid interdisciplinary research, say Hazel Sive and Sanjay Sarma.