Will MOOC's Disrupt Traditional Education?

The MOOC concept (i.e. Massive Open Online Courses) has been around for a while now approaching a decade according to Stephen Downes' guide on the subject.

Like many new Educational Technologies - can you say Khan Academy 5 times fast? - MOOC's were hailed by some as the future not just of e-Learning but of education itself.

Just as radio, television, and even the World Wide Web were considered potential education game changers in the past, I would argue that MOOC's haven't quite lived up to the hype in the sense of replacing the need for traditional schools and academic institutions.  Yet they may be transforming education and influencing instructional design in new ways.

This is probably as it should be.  When it comes to teaching and learning, apart from perhaps the printing press, new technologies rarely "disrupt" established institutions (in the Christensen sense).  They do however provide new methods, resources, and change the way we may learn through formal or informal processes.

A recent publication "Five Ways Moocs are Influencing Teaching and Learning" by Contact North suggests that Moocs are impacting education by "encouraging unbundling... changing the nature of credit granting...accelerating the development of blended learning... e-portfolois... learning communities and peer tutoring" (p.4).  In many ways, these should each help improve teaching and learning in established schools.

For more about MOOC's, I encourage readers to start at http://www.mooc.ca/resources.htm by Stephen Downes and George Siemens.