Multilitteratus Incognitus

Negotiable I was pretty surprised to get an email the other day, from the OLDS MOOC list of all places.  The subject heading was "MOOC vs MOC."  Sure, I was hooked in, both because I enjoyed OLDS MOOC and because it seemed like an interesting discussion to have.  Then I realized that this was sort of spam ;-) Here is the body of the message: Maybe wrongly, but I think of " an OC" as simply a very valuable tool to bring high quality education to the world. What a great export industry where the leading centers of intellectual property (such as US, UK, Germany, Canada, Australia...) has so much to provide others.. And, in a much better and easier way than every before. But, why is "Open" a necessary ingredient? Open = free. Are valuable pharmaceutical products that cost $10s of millions to research (though pennies to produce) given away for free? Is there any evidence whatsoever that this stimulates people to innovate? How about "Massive Onl...

While on vacation a friend and colleague sent me a small article warning about the end of the professoriate as a viable career . I was quite curious about it so I had a quick look (after all, it was about MOOCs in part, and I had a little spare time in the middle of the day once museums closed). On the surface it seems like an interesting conversation starter, but for me that's all it is: a conversation starter. I would have loved to hear more of Cary Nelson's speech where the blurb of "If we lose this battle for intellectual property, it's over. Being a professor will no longer be a viable career. It will be a service industry. That's it.” It's hard to speak more cogently about this without hearing the entire context. That said, I do think that this is an interesting point to dissect on its own, assuming of course that there isn't any other information that modifies this statement. Personally I think that the battle for IP has been lost for quite some t...