MOOCs and TOOCs and the role of problem solving in maths education

A quick quiz: which of the following four words doesn’t fit with the others??

Massive/Open/Online/Courses

We are going to muse about MOOCs today, a hot and highly debated topic in higher education circles. Are these ambitious new approaches to delivering free high quality education through online videos and interactive participation over the web going to put traditional universities out of business, or are they just one in a long historical line of hyped technologies that get everyone excited, and then fail to deliver the goods? (Think of the radio, TV, correspondence courses, movies, the tape recorder, the computer; all of which held out some promise for getting us to learn more and learn better, mostly to little avail, although the jury is still out on the computer.)

It’s fun to speculate on future trends, because of the potential—indeed likelihood—0f embarrassment for false predictions. Here is the summary of my argument today:…