Enabling MOOC Collaborations Through Modularity

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have the potential to transform teaching and learning, and their impact is already being felt on university campuses and in popular culture. To meet the diverse learning needs of students at many institutions, MOOCs must encourage collaboration, not confrontation, with the professors using them. Today’s online courses, typically created and controlled by small groups of faculty, both fail to foster this collaboration and also miss the opportunity to leverage the experience and experimental capacity present in classrooms across the country. A variety of instructors teaching a variety of different students in a variety of different ways represents an incredible education resource and living laboratory that MOOCs must find a way to harness, not suppress.