University consortium will innovate in on-line education

Provosts from a consortium of 13 research universities (mostly in the Big Ten) have issued a position paper calling for shared effort to take advantage of "new technologies and course redesign" to "improve instructional quality, enhance student learning outcomes, and extend the reach of campus instructional offerings."

They do not say so explicitly, but they seem to be saying they can innovate themselves rather than rely on the MOOC industry, and they propose collaborting on their online offerings.

As we have noted, there are now two major open-source MOOC platforms, which could be used by these or other universities to develop and offer their own material for offering as MOOCs or to supplement other teaching material, and we hope to see them offered as hosted services in the future.

Hopefully other consortia and university systems like mine (California State University) are thinking along similar lines. Let a thousand flowers bloom.