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This guest post is authored by R. Thomas, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Grading might not be the most exciting aspect of a teacher’s career but it might be one of the best sources of job security - particularly in light of proposed online courses with automated grading that aim to put professors out of work or into unappealing, low-wage, jobs. Of course we’ve heard a lot about online education, MOOCs, merit badges, and competency assessments. As Clayton Christiansen describes it, universities save money with online education simply because there is a glut of PhDs. For years graduate schools have been over producing the amount of PhDs. Consequently talented instructors are more than willing to teach courses at low wages, with no benefits, and with essentially no job security. As he writes in The Innovative University , “Adjunct instructors give the online educators two advantages. Rather than receiving an annual salary, as full-time faculty at traditional un...

About a month ago I began writing about the MOOC Industrial Complex .  As expected, it's growing rapidly.  Today's NY Times tells us that soon computers will be grading essays at the college level . Not only will those brainy professors be replaced by technology, but heck even better, the computer will give you a "retake" so you can try and improve your grade! Gee, how lovely.  The creator even emphasizes the importance of that immediate feedback and instant gratification, since (oh my goodness!) students currently have to wait days-- or even weeks!!-- for their essays to be graded. It won't be long now, we're told, as the system is "nearing the capability of human graders." Watch out you graduate students and professor-- the machines are coming... Just wait, as one of my favorite Twitterers Siva Vaidhyanathan writes, for the students to line up at the computers' office hours (??) to protest and renegotiate their grades.

One of the most stunning moments in the recent Ed Talks Wisconsin came towards the end of a Friday night discussion about MOOCs. The room was heavily populated with graduate students, many of whom were asking about the implications of these online courses for their employment prospects.  With the decoupling of teaching from their future responsibilities, many were (rightly) worried about how they'd be trained, funded, and what they'd do post degree. As one student put it,"What's the incentive for the next generation of scholars to pursue a PhD?"   In response to that question, the Chancellor of the UW Colleges, Ray Cross, responded this way: "Is your goal to get a PhD, or is your goal to change education?" Many in the room looked up, confused about whether he was serious. Well, an email that just arrived from UW-Madison suggests he was.  The newsletter it included contained the following key blurb: " New program trains students to create online cou...

Since we're already doggie-paddling around the deep-end of the MOOC phenomenon, it seems high time to begin thinking about how to assess MOOCs.  This is far from straightforward, since they are not typical courses and might best be conceived of as extension or continuing education activities. Very few colleges and universities are revealing their assessment practices for MOOCs; Duke is one exception.   This report explains that selective university's experiences with one course , and demonstrates how their administrators and faculty thought about measuring success. In my view, some of it is good, and some of it is exactly what not to do. So here is my overview of an initial evaluative framework for thinking about whether or not a MOOC was a "success." I'm posting this with the explicit intention of generating discussion to refine this framework and build it out, so please add your two cents. The framework has three components: an assessment of costs expended to g...

The discourse around higher education on two key topics-- MOOCs and performance funding-- is unfortunately trending toward a generic approach to institutions.  Lumping public and private universities together is always unwise, because not only do their funding sources differ, but so do their missions and masters. Public institutions still lean heavily on taxpayer support to provide undergraduate education, and that funding is subject to rules developed by externally , democratically controlled governance units.  They are explicitly responsible for expanding access, growing the proportion of the public that is educated at the postsecondary level.  These conditions represent both benefits and constraints to public colleges and universities. In contrast, at  private instituions  tuition and endowments provide most of the resources for undergraduate education, and rules for that funding and spending are mainly developed internally .  Their missions vary widely...

It was only a matter of time.  The anticipation was palpable when a group of about 50 concerned faculty, students, and staff from around UW-Madison gathered last summer to talk about the governance crisis at UVA .  The president of that flagship university had just been ousted for failing to quickly embrace MOOCs-- a sign some UVA board members thought meant that she was failing to embrace the "disruptive innovation" that will purportedly transform higher education.  While President Teresa Sullivan was reinstated some weeks later, after a period of alumni outrage, the writing was on the wall.  MOOCs were established as an especially hot new trend with broad appeal among the powerful who find "shock and awe" scenarios the best way to promote change-- and it wouldn't be long before UW-Madison lept into the quicksand. This morning UW-Madison is going public with the news that we're joining with Coursera to offer four pilot MOOCs .  Our administrators have app...

This morning, the UW System Board of Regents heard from a prominent speaker: Molly Corbett Broad , President of the American Council of Education.   Then, around noon, she joined a group on the UW-Madison campus to share a similar talk , but this time with an audience of faculty, staff, and students. Both talks focused on the theme of "higher education at a crossroads." I had the honor of introducing President Broad to the second audience, in my role as Senior Scholar at the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education .  I also moderated the discussion portion of the conversation. As I'm grateful to Broad for joining us, I feel it's among the most respectful acts to fully engage with her comments and offer my thoughts and questions here.  Simply receiving information from a talk without vigorously considering and debating the ideas is inconsistent with the spirit of the Wisconsin Idea.  So, with that in mind, here are my thoughts. First, let'...