By now, everyone has heard about MOOCs – Massive Open Online Courses. MOOCs offer unlimited participation and open access to anyone seeking information or knowledge. There are millions of people taking these courses… and who can blame them? The opportunity to learn in the terabyte world of the web is available at the fingertips of anyone with a laptop and an internet connection. But universal access to great thinking is certainly not new. Excite came on the scene in 1993… Yahoo began connecting us in 1994… and the Google revolution has been fulfilling our need for information since 1998. In fact, Google’s mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Sort of sounds like a MOOC.
Is Google the next MOOC? The concept of the massive open online course offering access to anyone was a novel idea only in that it created a vehicle for the learning to occur. But access to much of the same knowledge exists in searchable form on Google for anyone willing to find it. In fact, Google has partnered with Coursera to offer a Google MOOC. It seems to me that Google meets three of the four criteria to be considered a MOOC. Google is massive. It has created algorithms and tools that organize a seemingly infinite amount of information and knowledge on the web. Google is open. It is free and available to many users worldwide, easy to use, and provides open access to content on virtually any subject. Google is online, obviously. However, Google is not a course in the traditional sense of how we think of learning. But can it be?
In our continuing evolution from teacher-directed to self-directed learning, what exactly is a course? While they provide some disruption to this concept, MOOCs are generally still traditional in scope and feel to other courses. There are lectures, discussions, and competencies to be met. But, with a little creativity Google can be a course as well. For those who want to learn and are willing to explore, the information and knowledge is accessible. One can learn almost anything through Google. When higher education institutions, and more importantly the companies that hire graduates, more readily accept life experience and self-directed learning as adequate substitutes for traditional courses, Google can become a course in the broadest sense. All that will remain is competency and this will ultimately be determined by performance.
Oscar Wilde once said, “Education is a worthwhile thing, but it is well to remember that nothing worth knowing can be taught.” His suggestion that individuals must be responsible for their own learning is an important consideration in this discussion of self-directed learning. What better way to learn than to log on and begin surfing?