Games Based Learning MOOC

Interesting policy on consumer protection and education in the state of Minnesota.

Minnesota Gives Coursera the Boot, Citing a Decades-Old Law

I take it as a sign of resistance against open education, frankly. If the state educational policy-makers don't approve it, then Minnesotans can't learn from it.

What I don't understand is how they think they have purview over an online course system that charges no money, is not accepted as credit anywhere (I assume), and has been proven to have a positive impact. If it were a course on how to propagate hate crimes, I'd understand (I'm being a little ridiculous, I know). Have they sent the same letter to MIT OpenCourseware, iTunesU, Utah OpenCourware, etc?

Part of me wonders what criteria their Office of Higher Education uses to approve schools. Can it only be education that doesn't threaten their own schools? Are they afraid of a massive takeover of their education system?

Later edit: By the way, I don't mean for this to come off simply as a stupid rant. Really, I'm sort of trying to figure out the motives of the Office of Higher Education beyond what seems to be the obvious. Anyone have any additional info?

-LeeDale

The link is gone but I get the picture. Who knows, I think States on pushes from universities and colleges may try to lessen the impact of the MOOCs on their tuition-hungry institutions, I expect there model is concerned with giving someone credit who may or may not have had to pay for the certificate, say three hours credit in Anthropic-Astronomy and not get any compensation for it. I would expect they will ultimately have a "fee" not a tax, the Supreme Court has shown us the difference on that one, in order to accept the cost. A cost of reviewing matching the curriculum of their class to the MOOC. As long as everyone gets paid something they will probably accept MOOC credit.

Ultimately it might be "pay 25% of the tuition for Anthropic-Astronomy" to our institution, present your MOOC certificate, and we will give you the three credits at in our institution. All they have to figure out is how to make money and also deliver content to students. This would actually save them money because they could probably do it with less instructors, which would have loud complaints from teacher/professor organizations. It is a tangled web they weave.

#6875491 Leedale wrote:

I take it as a sign of resistance against open education, frankly. If the state educational policy-makers don't approve it, then Minnesotans can't learn from it.

What I don't understand is how they think they have purview over an online course system that charges no money, is not accepted as credit anywhere (I assume), and has been proven to have a positive impact. If it were a course on how to propagate hate crimes, I'd understand (I'm being a little ridiculous, I know). Have they sent the same letter to MIT OpenCourseware, iTunesU, Utah OpenCourware, etc?

Part of me wonders what criteria their Office of Higher Education uses to approve schools. Can it only be education that doesn't threaten their own schools? Are they afraid of a massive takeover of their education system?

Later edit: By the way, I don't mean for this to come off simply as a stupid rant. Really, I'm sort of trying to figure out the motives of the Office of Higher Education beyond what seems to be the obvious. Anyone have any additional info?

-LeeDale

Thanks, Grasshopper, for your last. I found another link at:
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/minnesota-gives-coursera-the-boot-citing-a-decades-old-law/40542

While reading I found a very useful "historical" timeline of MOOCs, from the Higher Education Chronicle:

http://chronicle.com/article/What-You-Need-to-Know-About/133475/

I like that the timeline includes critical perspectives (eg 'Plenty of Promise, but No Panacea') as well as Public Relations puffery (eg Coursera's 'Massive Open Cookout')