I'm not really sure how the "MOOC Sceptic's Toolkit" published in the American Association of University Professors's Academe Blog is helping anyone. This edition features a 'sample letter' to be sent to parents and newspapers, but while it starts off well it eventually becomes a characteristically academic tome. Worse, it shows zero comprehension of how a MOOC operates. Consider this bit: "If there are 30,000 students enrolled in a 15-week MOOC and each of those students were to send just one e-mail to the instructor over that semester, the instructor would need to answer 2,000 e-mails per week." That's why MOOCs do not employ bilateral communications. D'uh. The professors' concern comes out several paragraphs later in the letter: "although university administrations have continued to find new ways to squeeze savings from the instructional end of their institutions' budgets, we are clearly approaching a point at which a 'quality education' will be little more than an empty promise at many institutions."
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