The Expansion of MOOCs and the Meaning of Life

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The FT earlier this week had an interesting report on the expansion of MOOCs into China. Not, surprisingly enough, the expansion of China into MOOCs, which, given the size of their market and the qualification-centric nature of their educational system, would make a lot of sense. No, for now, foreign (”western”) MOOCs are starting to make big inroads there. Which, given the size of their market and the qualification-centric nature of their educational system, actually makes even more sense.

Hong Kong, image via Wikipedia

Guokr Mooc Academy launched in July 2003 and currently hosts just over 2000 courses via partnerships with Coursera, edX and other US and UK platforms. Unsurprisingly, the majority of the courses deal with the sciences and technology. But, and this got my attention, there is increasing interest in humanities courses. Including history.

One of Harvard’s MOOCs is a course called ChinaX. Subtitled in Chinese…

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Circling Fairness

Julian Stodd's Learning Blog

There’s a gap between desire and reality, between aspiration and the act. Whilst many organisations espouse values such as ‘integrity‘ and ‘fairness‘, the reality is that they display neither, inhabiting instead a space of indifference or meek acceptance.

They may not be actively dishonest or unfair, but neither are they actively striving to attain these ideals. They occupy, instead, the middle ground: a place of apathy and compliance. Why? Because rules and regulation do not grant or confer integrity and fairness, instead, they create a space for those behaviours, but it’s the behaviour that defines who we are. The rules may prevent us being unfair, but it’s our action or inaction in the moment that counts.

Doing the bare minimum may create a great place to work. It may mean that most of the time we are happy, that we can do our jobs…

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