Education Commons^™

Slow Edtech: Pedagogical Principles, Collaborative Explorations, And Persistent Challenges, Peter Taylor, Felicia Sullivan, Jeremy Szteiter

Working Papers in Critical, Creative and Reflective Practice

This article describes two “Slow EdTech” initiatives, using this label to denote a focus on learning and the development of capacities for learning along with a mindful approach to the uptake of new digital tools that become available. One initiative, dating from 2001, is a set of guidelines about specific situations and specific ways in which specific educational technologies are of significant pedagogical benefit. The other, dating from 2013, is online Collaborative Explorations (CEs) for moderate-sized open online collaborative learning. The tools and processes used in CEs for inquiry, dialogue, reflection, and collaboration are designed to be readily learned by …

The Merchants Of Moocs, James Grimmelmann

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

A loose network of educators, entrepreneurs, and investors are promoting Massive Open Online Courses as an innovation that will radicaly disrupt higher education. These Merchants of MOOCs see MOOCs' novel features -- star professors, flipped classrooms, economies of scale, unbundling, and openness -- as the key to dramatically improving higher education while reducing its cost.

But MOOCs are far from unprecedented. There is very little in them that has not been tried before, from 19th-century correspondence courses to Fathom, Columbia's $25 million dot-com boondoggle. Claims of disruption look rather different when this missing context is restored. This essay examines some …