We are in the middle of the first anniversary of the creation of the big 3 MOOC providers (Coursera, Udacity, edX).
- Sebastian Thrun announced the creation of Udacity on January 23, 2012 as described by Reuters.
- Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng announced the creation of Coursera on April 18, 2012 in this NY Times article.
- MIT and Harvard announced the creation of edX on May 2, 2012 in this MIT article.
And what a year it’s been, especially in terms of the engagement of national media, university presidents and boards on the topic of MOOCs, online education and the future of higher education in general. I doubt there is a higher education conference this year that doesn’t mention MOOCs in one form or another.
But one year is a seriously short time period for higher education and educational technology, which are just not used to changes on this time scale. To give some perspective, consider the following:
- There are quite a few ed tech products that have been or will have been in beta or introductory mode for at least a year when fully released.
- This time one year ago, few people outside of Virginia knew what a Rector or how a board of them might force a president to resign partially based on discussions about MOOCs.
- Many LMS and almost all student information system / ERP selection processes (not even including implementation) take more than a year.
A year may be a short time when considering past ed tech products, but it’s a long time in internet years, and that is where Educational Technology nows finds itself