Open online courses

MOOCs, or massive open online courses, are college-level classes made available to thousands of students anywhere in the world on the internet. Since their inception several years ago, providers – corporations and universities — say MOOCs will revolutionize academia by providing less expensive education to more students. Among their drawbacks are prerecorded lectures, computerized testing and less opportunity for critical thinking through classroom discussion. So can MOOCs fulfill their promise? We talk with three people who have experience teaching and taking MOOCs. We start off with journalist JUSTIN POPE who wrote about learning on line in a recent AP article. Then we’ll talk to EDWARD ROCK of the University of Pennsylvania and TIM BURKE of Swarthmore College about the challenges and benefits of MOOCs.