California politicians want to use MOOCs to satiate those on waiting lists for basic classes at public institutions of higher education. Interesting approach, looking forward to watching this unfold. As with all things, California’s size has the ability to alter policy across the country and even the world. From Chronicle of Higher Education:
Senate Bill 520, sponsored by State Sen. Darrell Steinberg, a Democrat who is president pro tem of the Senate, calls for establishing a statewide platform through which students who have trouble getting into certain low-level, high-demand classes could take approved online courses offered by providers outside the state’s higher-education system. If the bill is passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, state colleges and universities could be compelled to accept credits earned in massive open online courses, or MOOCs, bringing the controversial courses into the mainstream faster than even their proponents had predicted.
But right now SB 520 is just a two-page “spot bill,” a legislative placeholder to be amended with details later. And for those concerned about the consequences of a sudden embrace of a relatively new enterprise such as MOOCs, the devil may be in those details. Who will approve the courses? What role will faculty members really have? Will student financial aid apply to paid online courses? How will the revenue collected by the companies benefit the colleges? The students?
At a news conference announcing the bill, Mr. Steinberg acknowledged that such a bold move could be expected to cause “some fear, and sometimes some upset.” He took pains to emphasize that the legislation “does not represent a shift in funding priority” for higher education in California, and is not intended to introduce “a substitution for campus-based instruction.”"This is about helping students,” he said. “We would be making a big mistake if we did not take advantage of the technological advances in our state” to do so.
