Education 2.0 & 3.0

A MOOC is one part of a solution, not a panacea for all of today’s training challenges.

In the early days of MOOCs, Sebastian Thrun boldly claimed that in 50 years there would be only 10 universities left in the world. He stepped back from the idea that MOOCs could solve all of education’s problems after Udacity’s courses didn’t perform nearly as well as expected in a pilot program at San Jose State University. The problem was the idea that you could just turn a course into a MOOC and it would instantly be a success, an assumption that turned out to be false.

MOOCs can solve many of today’s common training problems, but only if they are developed using a solid, research-backed pedagogical approach. Putting boring training online doesn’t make it engaging; putting well-designed training online in a format that resonates with employees does.

When developing training courses and programs, learning professionals would do best to think of MOOCs as just one tool in a constantly expanding toolbox.