{"id":4416,"date":"2013-07-24T14:39:40","date_gmt":"2013-07-24T19:39:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/?p=4416"},"modified":"2013-08-02T07:48:19","modified_gmt":"2013-08-02T12:48:19","slug":"weighing-the-cost-of-moocs-is-it-worth-the-expense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/2013\/07\/24\/weighing-the-cost-of-moocs-is-it-worth-the-expense\/","title":{"rendered":"Weighing the Cost of MOOCs: Is it Worth the Expense?"},"content":{"rendered":"

MOOCs are supposed to be free, but it appears that for\u00a0universities and professors, that is\u00a0hardly the case. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)\u00a0have so far proven to be\u00a0a huge\u00a0financial commitment\u00a0for\u00a0institutions and according to recent studies, the preparation can be very time consuming for the educators who build them.<\/p>\n

\"Weighing<\/a><\/em>Financial Commitment<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Chronicle of Higher Education<\/em> <\/a>has been reporting\u00a0that MOOCs\u00a0have been quite expensive for universities. MOOC provider EdX apparently charges $250,000 per course, and then another $50,000 every time the course is offered (April 29, 2013). EdX also keeps part of the revenue generated by the profits of each course. To use the “Coursera platform”, another MOOC provider, The New York Times<\/em><\/a> reported that universities would have to pay $8 per student enrolled, and $30-$60 per student to use content developed at a different school (May 30, 2013). In a class of 1,000+ students, those numbers really add up. Such prices show that creating a MOOC is a large and risky investment for any educational institution. As a result, many people, such as writer for The Chronicle of Higher Education<\/em> <\/a>Jason Mittell, believe that these investments will only be possible for elite institutions.<\/p>\n

Time\/Labor Commitment<\/strong><\/p>\n

On March 20, 2013, an article<\/a> for\u00a0The Chronicle\u00a0of Higher Education <\/em>reported on a survey taken by MOOC professors. In the survey,\u00a0the vast majority of these\u00a0professors expressed how teaching a MOOC “took a lot out of them.” Most spent over\u00a0one-hundred hours on the project before it even started, and devoted 8-10\u00a0hours to\u00a0running it\u00a0during the week. Duke University professor Cathy Davidson has been blogging<\/a> about her own preparation for teaching an online course. She says that the time and labor involved is so great, that she doubts how any professor would “be crazy enough to do this”, let alone for free. Although she gets paid a $10,000 stipend for the course, Davidson says that all of it is being used for “teaching assistants, technical assistants, and equipment.”<\/p>\n

While many are jumping on the MOOC bandwagon now because it’s new and exciting, these commitments may cause it to get old in a hurry. With such high costs in money, time, and labor, it appears that MOOCs may not be worth the effort or risk. Universities must be willing to pay both for the course itself, and a higher compensation for the professors that teach them. Without this, the much talked about “MOOC revolution” will become nothing more than a moment in history.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This post is part of a series on “Making History Online” that involves an examination of open online learning in the field of history funded by the Mellon Digital Humanties grant.\u00a0\u00a0Students and faculty at the House Divided Project at Dickinson College\u00a0 are collaborating this summer on a new open, online course called, “Understanding Lincoln,” taught by Prof. Matthew Pinsker and covering ways to teach Abraham Lincoln’s legacy using close readings of his most important writings.\u00a0 This new type of online course\u00a0represents a unique partnership between Dickinson College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.\u00a0 The course is available for both graduate credit and free participation.\u00a0 Registration for the course closes on Friday, July 19, 2013.\u00a0 For more information, go to https:\/\/www.gilderlehrman.org\/programs-exhibitions\/understanding-lincoln-graduate-course<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MOOCs are supposed to be free, but it appears that for\u00a0universities and professors, that is\u00a0hardly the case. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)\u00a0have so far proven to be\u00a0a huge\u00a0financial commitment\u00a0for\u00a0institutions and according to recent studies, the preparation can be very time consuming for the educators who build them. Financial Commitment The Chronicle of Higher Education has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4760],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history-online"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4416"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4455,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4416\/revisions\/4455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}