On "super-professors" and the MOOC pushback

As with all new things that receive a lot of (arguably "too much") positive press, the backlash necessarily ensues. So it is now with MOOCs. Early, simplistic pushback came in the form of noting the lack of the student-professor interaction possible in a live classroom (e.g., this NY Times article and associated NPR interview). As statistics came out on the early MOOCs, attention focused heavily on poor completion/ high "failure" rates (e.g., this Money magazine article). The most recent negativity is different and warrants more attention, highlighted recently in a letter by San Jose State University professors to a MOOC-teacher. Specifically, there's an assertion by several in academia now that professors (or, as negative writers like to hyperbolize, "super-professors") who teach MOOC courses are providing a tool that reckless universities are using to dismantle departments, reduce costs by hiring cheaper, non-expert teachers, etc. I find this last criticism the most troubling, since it's leveled by colleagues and possibly friends rather than random writers (e.g., this blog, or the rather scathing comments at the bottom of this blog).

I'll present my thoughts on each of these, in turn. Honestly, I think the first two arguments display naiveté of how MOOCs are used by the majority of users, but the last merits extensive discussion and continuing dialogue-- I think now that both sides (including mine) had overly hasty responses before.

On fewer interactions and/ or lower quality of MOOCs relative to regular college classes: My initial reaction to this was a mere, "Duh!"  Of course there's more potential for student-professor interaction in in-person classrooms and campuses than via MOOC. I'd be surprised if anyone thinks taking a set of MOOCs is equal to "having a college education." I've certainly not heard any professor say that the MOOC version of their class was "equivalent" to interacting with them directly. I also have not heard of thousands of high school students who previously planned to go to college deciding now that they don't need to and will just take some MOOCs. This  latter non-effect is punctuated by noting that most MOOC students are older, and many already have college degrees.

On the high "failure" rates: This is partially the fault of MOOC-participants (venues, faculty, and colleges) "overselling" enrollments. For example, my first MOOC iteration peaked at 33,000 enrolled students, yet something like 2000 got certificates of completion. These numbers are totally deceptive-- the first is fictitiously high, and the last is fictitiously low. The "33,000" is the number of people who clicked a link to "enroll". When you "enroll" in a college class, you commit funds and time to doing the entire thing, and you anticipate a grade that will help or hurt your probability of subsequent advancement. For MOOCs, you may "enroll" just to see the full syllabus-- it's more an expression of potential interest than a commitment in any way. Given you may enroll months before the MOOC even comes online, it may be just a way of being added to the e-mail list about the class to possibly peek in on it later.

Related to both of the above criticisms-- MOOCs present college class material, but MOOC viewers, by and large, are often just curious people, not people choosing it as an alternative to college. They want to peek at what's offered, perhaps not with much more thought or intention than when you change the channel to see what's showing on TNT. Do you "fail" a MOOC if you don't watch all the videos or complete the assessments? Only in the same way you "fail" Law and Order on TNT if you end up turning it off after 40 minutes. I'll give a few personal examples-- I signed up for two MOOCs over the past few months: Useful Genetics and Irrational Behavior. I signed up for Useful Genetics just because I wanted to see the coverage and style in which it was taught. I watched one complete video, a few pieces of others, and a few Discussion Forum threads. That was all I wanted out of the class-- did I "fail" it? Technically yes, I was enrolled and did not complete the assessments, but in reality, I was neither "truly" a student in it nor did I fail it. For Irrational Behavior, I did one assessment and watched the first three weeks of videos, but I got busy after that. The class is over now, but I downloaded all the remaining videos and intend to watch (many of) them sometime later. Again, did I "fail" it? You decide.

On MOOCs dismantling college classes: Perhaps I was naive myself, but I never imagined this would arise as a criticism of professors offering MOOCs. As discussed in a prior blog entry, the main reason I embarked upon a MOOC was to motivate myself to record videos in order to offer my on-campus students a "flipped class" experience. This type of format is normal for humanities (presumably few or no literature professors spend entire periods reading Shakespeare to enrolled students), but they have traditionally been less common for introductory science courses. My impression, as discussed in another blog entry, was that the flipped class format, leveraging the MOOC for videos, was an asset for my students. Indeed, I naively thought other faculty may "want" to use a few of my MOOC videos (or any others) rather than go to the trouble of creating their own. Keep in mind I spent literally hundreds of hours preparing the MOOC-- why duplicate efforts?

I won't speak on the San Jose State University incident, since all of it is second-hand to me. I will say that I think college administrations are doing their students a disservice if they do any of the following things:

1) replace knowledgeable, long-term faculty with a MOOC

2) replace knowledgeable, long-term faculty with a MOOC+TA (or MOOC+short-term faculty, or MOOC+ out-of-field, long-term faculty)

3) overburden faculty by asking them to teach more courses and pretending it's less effort since the courses can be associated with MOOCs

4) in any way "dictate" to faculty that they must teach with specific formats.

Basically, I think MOOCs should be available for any existing faculty to utilize if they see fit, but in no way "forced" upon faculty or as an excuse for dismantling departments from maintaining expert, long-term faculty. I think all parties agree on these points.

Now, if administrations dismantle departments, is it also the fault of the MOOC provider or MOOC instructor? Therein lies the point of potential disagreement. My word-choice was poor (and perspective initially quite naive) in my quote in the Chronicle's blog: I do bear responsibility for what happens with what I put out on the web. If I put a recipe for how to make agent orange on the web, and a kid gets sick or hurts others with it, I certainly bear blame. The analogy others used about atomic bombs also has some merit... if I had put out something that destructive.

But, let's explore these analogies all the way then. Is there a "good" use for agent orange? Do atomic bombs help most people? All the critics casually avoid the single biggest flaw in their arguments and analogies: millions of people around the world use MOOCs in very constructive ways to advance their knowledge and understanding. In contrast, to my knowledge, not one university has made any alteration to their faculty structure or imposed anything upon their faculty in response to my MOOC, yet thousands of students worldwide have completed it. Some of these students who completed the MOOC report changes in career direction or world perspective directly in response to this educational opportunity (e.g., this report, as well as MANY that have e-mailed me directly or written reviews of the course online). Somehow, these positive effects get swept under the rug by MOOC critics with their sweeping castigations and ridiculous analogies to atomic bombs or other weapons.

Further, MOOC critics often dance around the desired outcome of their critiques-- a sign the criticism may not be fully defensible. If MOOCs have such a net negative effect on the world and MOOC professors (or so-called "super-professors") are complicit, why aren't the critics being explicit in telling us, "Stop offering this free education to the world." I could continue to offer a flipped class to my Duke students with the videos I've already made, but stop offering the videos to anyone outside of Duke University (or distribute them myself directly only to colleagues who swear to never share their existence with administrators). What of the MOOC students? Watch this video to meet a few. Then, tell me-- why should I deprive Richard the train-driver in Sheffield (timestamp 12:55) from pursuing his interest? What about Aline, the high school student in El Salvador (timestamp 32:36) whose school never teaches genetics or evolution? Getting a "true" or "full" college education is not an option for them right now, so they should get... nothing? Or maybe throw them a few links on the web and tell them to go to college? And what about the millions of other Richards and Alines? Would critics really suggest that, because some university administrations are reckless in their actions, millions of people worldwide who are benefiting from MOOCs (and using them in the purest academic sense) should not get this resource any longer?

I really do sympathize with the concerned professors (to whom I'm being somewhat rude by referring to them merely as "critics" here). Faculty jobs are in jeopardy, including faculty that are doing a better job than their MOOC replacement. Some colleges are making decisions that are financially positive but pedagogically terrible. If the concerned professors have specific suggestions for me (rather than accusations), I'm eager to listen. I'm quite willing to write letters to deans or provosts about the importance of MOOCs in general and mine in particular NOT being used as substitutes for courses or mandates for faculty. I'm happy to ask both my institution and Coursera to help with these efforts as well. I'm happy to even bring the topic up with the scientific societies to which I belong and hold leadership roles (e.g., Society for the Study of Evolution, Genetics Society of America, American Genetic Association), to see if perhaps we could write something on behalf of the societies or take other constructive actions.

Nonetheless, some of the residual criticism seems to be coming primarily because the early MOOC professors 1) tend to be from so-called "elite" universities and 2) received a lot of positive press. I won't deny these facts-- I am fortunate to be employed at what is perceived to be an elite university. It's true that many of the public perceive MOOCs as good because they are offered by these elite universities, and I understand that faculty at colleges not-perceived-as-elite find the availability of my course (and other elite-university MOOCs) potentially threatening as a result. I've also received extensive positive publicity for my MOOC efforts (as well as the recent negative publicity I mentioned above), though I stress that, contrary to many insinuations, I've neither received one penny in compensation from my MOOC nor any reduction in my on-campus teaching load. I fully acknowledge that there are many more effective and engaging teachers than me or other MOOC professors in many colleges that are not offering MOOCs, and I'd tell anyone debating between having a class taught by an in-field professor (irrespective of college) vs. my MOOC (with or without a TA) to do the former. It's ludicrous to say that a course is "better" solely because it's offered from a Duke or Harvard than a San Jose State or Western West Virginia Community College. I was a student at the College of William and Mary (certainly not Ivy League), and I'm very proud of the education I received there. Rather than further castigating MOOCs and MOOC faculty, perhaps we can work together to fight misperceptions, given we all agree they're untrue?

Now is the time for us to balance the (over)exuberance from early MOOC publicity with the concerns raised about MOOC misuse. I ask that my critical colleagues avoid gross hyperbole like suggesting that my words or actions show "gross indifference to the welfare of nearly everyone else in their profession". In return, I promise to be more aware of the misuse problem and to engage with faculty in how we might mitigate such misuses of MOOCs by reckless college administrations. But, I ask that further discussion of negative effects be balanced-- even if those not fond of (or negatively affected by) MOOCs don't rave about the benefits of MOOCs, at least don't insult me and the millions of MOOC students out there by pretending those benefits don't exist or that the MOOC professors are solely delivering online courses for money, glory, or the title of "super-professor."

Flipping with a MOOC-- A very new approach to teaching for me

This semester (spring, 2013), I integrated my on-campus Duke University class (which I've taught twice before using a "traditional" lecture format) with my online class (which I'd taught once before via Coursera MOOC), both bearing the title "Introduction to Genetics and Evolution."  My on-campus class had 453 students, while the online one peaked at 27,000 enrolled (though MOOC enrollment figures are misleading).  Needless to say, I was more than slightly nervous about this experiment messing up, given the number of students who would be affected!  My initial reaction is that the integration (via "flipped classroom") was a success and thoroughly enjoyable by me (I'll have to wait to see the formal course evaluations before I know how much most of the students liked it), but I learned some lessons for future iterations.

FORMAT

Duke students had more expected of them outside of class than in my prior course iterations.  Prior to every class period, Duke students were expected to watch 3 videos (average ~15 minutes each) in Coursera bearing 80-90% of the primary "raw information content" that I expected them to learn from the course.  This content is what I delivered in years past via traditional lecture format in class, but now students had to set aside ~45 minutes before each class period to get it, perhaps longer if they needed to replay segments or stop to think. 

Following the videos, the students had to take a graded preclass quiz, formatted similarly to their in-class tests and of comparable difficulty.  The purpose was two-fold: for them to identify areas of misunderstanding or gaps in their knowledge, and for me to see what students struggled with from my lectures.  The last question of the quiz was a free-response, "What did you find interesting or confusing?"  I reviewed their progress the night before class, and their answers guided the slides I'd make for the class period.

I set aside the first few minutes of the class period for students to collaborate in completing the preclass quiz.  After that, I spent ~10 minutes going over areas of misunderstanding based on the preclass quiz performance and free responses.  The bulk of the class period was devoted to students working in self-selected small groups on ~7 ungraded practice problems designed to help them integrate and apply the concepts from the lectures.  The teaching assistants (TAs) and I would walk around the room and engage the students to see what problems they were stuck on.  At the end of the class period, I'd go over the answers, and then spend ~5-10 minutes presenting a practical or medical application of the concepts related to the lecture, or recent primary research building from it (the remaining 10-20% of "information content"), often building on what students said they found interesting.

Besides that, the rest of the class format was as before-- the students had a weekly problem set to complete, weekly laboratory sections, a few other online practice problems, and three open-book, in-class tests.  The class period activities were also recorded and made available to any students who couldn't make it due to illness, travel, etc. (again, just like before).

WHAT WORKED

Most of the class's students who answered the informal mid-semester and end-semester course surveys indicated they were pleased (and often pleasantly surprised) with how well the flipped class format worked.  Students did not have to initially assimilate the primary class material at 8:30am as previously, but could work at whatever time of day was optimal for them.  They could also easily pause at any time, or immediately replay anything they missed.  Most reported that the in-class reinforcements were helpful for them to really understand the material and to perform better on assessments (see figures below).  Most appreciated the "reactive" and "interactive" nature of the class, where the class period content responded directly to their areas of interest or confusion.  Some students told me that the format forced them to study as they went along, such that they noticed they barely had to study right before the tests since they'd already done so much along the way.  A handful said they liked the online discussion forums, and found the elaborations by either Duke or online students on some of the material helpful.

Figures

Important note: these informal evaluations were done online, so they were not biased in being completed by just the subset of students who regularly came to class. 

Fig 1: Response to question: Did you find that the in-class presentations and exercises were useful and reinforced concepts and approaches from the recorded lectures?  (For scale, 1 was never chosen, and 2 was chosen twice)
1 = NEVER, 2 = RARELY, 3 = SOMETIMES, 4 = OFTEN, 5 = ALWAYS

Fig 2: Response to question: Did you find that the in-class activities provided you with additional practice that improved your performance in assessments (e.g., problem sets and tests)? (For scale, 1 was chosen twice, by the same people who put "2" in previous question.)
1 = NEVER, 2 = RARELY, 3 = SOMETIMES, 4 = OFTEN, 5 = ALWAYS

Even some of the more critical students appreciated the outcome of the class format-- one person said snappishly, "Of course we did better on the tests-- we had to work harder."  I'll just say "true."

In terms of my feelings, I perceived that the students really understood and interpreted the material better than in either previous course iteration.  I added more challenging concepts than I had covered in previous years, and I was impressed that the students seemed to really understand them.  I was also impressed that some areas of common misunderstanding from previous years just didn't seem to come up.  I should emphasize-- these are all my perceptions, not quantitatively confirmed conclusions with statistical significance.  But, the class did better on the first test than I've ever seen in my career teaching.

Finally, it was just a lot more fun for me.  A traditional class is like a performance-- you get up on stage and do it, with the only feedback being quizzical looks, laughs, or the very rare hand up for a question.  This was truly interactive-- I started the class period by giving students what they asked for, and then spent much of the rest of the period in one-on-one or small group discussions about the material.  I like teaching for the interactive nature of meeting people and watching them get excited, interested, or at the very least "more knowledgeable" about a subject, and this format really allowed me to experience those pieces.  It also really, really helped me learn what concepts students understood and what concepts need new forms of presentation for future class iterations.  As my colleague Dan Gauthier in Physics said about his flipped class, "I've never felt more attuned to my students' understanding."

WHAT WAS LESS-THAN-IDEAL

Some of the students were unhappy with the added workload of having to watch ~1.5 hours of video each week.  I personally don't find that unreasonable given the small amount of other outside-class work that was expected of them-- I am confident many humanities courses assign more than that in readings each week.  Here was perhaps the most critical response I received on the format: "While the flipped class format benefits many of my fellow students, this format hinders my learning. In a normal class, I would go to lecture and take notes and such, and then do whatever work was required of me, but no more; I normally take a minimalistic learning approach, does as little as possible to succeed. As such, I do not normally watch the online lectures because I find that doing so is more time consuming than just glancing over the lecture slides to find the information needed".  Fortunately, this was a minority opinion (and, in my opinion, one unbefitting of a student at Duke University or any college/ university).

One negative I did anticipate was that a fraction of the students fell far behind (especially between test 1 and test 2) and did not really catch up in a timely manner to do well on the later tests.  If one fails to watch the lecture videos before class, there really is no point to coming to class since the student would be just lost on the material.  At that point, it can become self-reinforcing-- a student falls behind, and the work needed to "catch up" is greater than in a traditional class, possibly making them more likely to further procrastinate and fall further behind.

A possibly related negative I did NOT anticipate was a drop in class attendance... attendance probably was consistently at or below 50% after the third week.  My previous traditional classes were all recorded, so it was not uncommon for people to skip and presumably just watch the recording of my video.  We often had 50-70% attendance in the traditional classes, unlike the <50% with the flipped class.  I was surprised that the fraction of the class that now didn't come to class (one day after a late basketball game dipping to ~20%), even though it seemed like there was "more" reason to come than before since the in-class piece was not basic content just-as-easily assimilated by video.  A few students I talked with cited two reasons 1) the increase in overall amount of outside-class work (the fact they already had to spend 90+ minutes a week on the material made some students less likely to spend even more by coming to class), and relatedly, 2) some simply felt confident with the material from the video, and would thus skip the reinforcement and application in-class.  The negative here is that, for a fraction of these skippers, this confidence was unfounded-- I warned students that the test 2 material was more challenging than test 1, and despite my repeated warnings, there was a noticeable drop in attendance after the high performance on test 1 (and proving my point, a 10-point drop in average grade).

The one class format element that I think "flopped" was the few minutes at the beginning of class for completing the preclass quiz in the classroom-- almost no students ever did this, and most people just arrived 5 minutes late for class to skip that piece.

OTHER SURPRISES

The biggest surprise to me was the absence of correlation between class attendance and grade.  The three test grades were very highly correlated with each other despite the differences in mean, but there was no clear association between which students came to class and student test performance.  However, upon further consideration, this result ties in with what I mentioned above.  Some of the students who felt they had a good handle on the material just from the primary content delivery in the video recordings didn't come to class (or didn't come regularly).  I think the absence of correlation suggests that many of them were right-- they did understand the material well enough from the video lecture that in-class reinforcement may not have had a noticeable effect on their assessment performance.  Similarly, some of the people who came to class were those who struggled with the material the most-- their coming was a good thing, since they had more practice and better performance as a result.  Some of the students with whom I interacted in the class had clearly watched the video lectures, and were still struggling to assimilate the content.  As such, my hypothesis is that the format, even with its sparse attendance, served to homogenize student performance-- basically "almost everyone" in the class did well in assessments, either due to intrinsic high ability (or prior background) but perhaps little or no extra practice in class, or potentially lower ability (or less background) but with a lot of extra practice in class.

(Obviously, many students who came to class also had high ability and good prior background, too-- I certainly don't mean to imply that only struggling students attended class.  Some came regularly just because they were very interested in the material, too.  Similarly, I know many students who performed poorly yet rarely or never came to class.)

I recall our forward-thinking university provost chatting about this a year ago at an informal dinner-- that with flipped classes, "everyone might do well" in the class.  Some of the literature also says this format "levels the playing field" of classes.  The grade improvement opens the much stickier question of the purpose of grades (which I shall pose but not pursue)-- are we truly grading to assess how well students can understand and apply the material (wherein it's fine for the whole class to have A's), or are we also trying to distinguish students with higher intrinsic ability from others?  Personally, I have no intention of "toughening" my class solely to "counter" high student performance on what I think are perfectly fair and reasonably challenging tests-- doing so directly violates my philosophy of the purpose of teaching and needlessly alienates students.

(Quick note: my question about "all A's" was rhetorical-- not all my class's students received A's... there were many who did not achieve high grades.)

My other surprise was the general absence of engagement of the on-campus students in the online Discussion Forums associated with the online class.  Many of my Duke students said they looked in the forums, but even though I offered the Duke students extra credit for posting in the forums, 80% of the Duke students never posted in the forums, and most of those who did post made 5 or fewer short comments or questions.  A handful really engaged with others in the forums, but <10 students total.

WHAT I MIGHT DO DIFFERENTLY

Despite the absence of a significant association of test grade with attendance, I know at least some students skipped class to the detriment of their performance.  This was partially my fault-- in the canonical flipped class format, there are in-class assessments with stable student groups that are assigned by the instructor, thus forcing students to attend and be accountable to their classmates and themselves.  I deviated from this format because I anticipated (correctly, I think) that a lot of students would miss classes each day due to illness, family travel, student activities, and sports.  I did not want to be in the position of having to judge daily whether particular absences were "excused" or not for tens of students.

What I'm considering next year is to have one group-activity question graded each class period (or once per week).  If there are 14 such activities, perhaps I'd allow them to keep their highest 6 grades of the 14 only.  Hence, one has to show up to the class at least that small fraction of the time to get the grade.  However, I would then not accept any excuses-- any sports- or activity-travel, or any illnesses, have to come out of the "8 dropped grades."  This may seem like an exceptionally low bar, but my goal is to get students to come to some classes such that they have the opportunity to assess for themselves whether coming to class is helping their understanding and test performance.  If the answer is no, then so be it.  I just don't want them to "assume" that coming to class is unnecessary without having experience with trying it.  I'm still deciding if this is a change I'll employ or not...

SYNOPSIS

Although requiring a TON of upfront work, this experience has definitely changed my view of teaching.  As I commented in a prior blog post, I feel now that, as faculty become less "lecturers" and more "facilitators" in the classroom, they work with the humanity of students rather than treating students as consumers of prepackaged products.  Teaching this class was very, very enjoyable.  Further, these students are interesting and talented people, many of whom are spending tens of thousands of dollars to be at an elite university, and are receiving some classes in a format of not much greater value than what could be found online.  My statement is not to suggest that the total college experience is what happens in the classroom (clearly untrue), nor that the students themselves are incapable of obtaining more from traditional lecture classes by taking the initiative to engage professors directly.  However, my goal this semester was to add as much value as possible to the in-class experience by making it visibly dramatically more than what is available freely online-- far more opportunities for interaction, extensive reinforcement, "going further" with the material, etc. (in addition to the laboratory sections, of course).  I hope that the vast majority of the students viewed it as successful and beneficial... I guess I'll find out, to some extent, when I get the formal evaluations back!

Thoughts and feedback welcome!

LINKS
Article in Duke Today, February 11, 2013
Editorial in Duke Chronicle, February 25, 2013
Article in Duke Chronicle, March 5, 2013
Article in Duke Towerview magazine, March 27, 2013
Student project on flipped class discussing this one in particular, April, 2013

Teaching, and the educational role of the university in the 21st century

When I went to college in 1988-1992, my experience was similar to how many science-oriented students experience college today.  I went to classes, wherein a professor stood in front of the room and told us facts and perspectives about their subject.  In most biology courses, my role was clear-- listen, take notes, and occasionally (genetics, especially), learn approaches to solving particular kinds of problems.  Students asked questions occasionally, but probably over half the class never asked the professor a single question all semester, and no one had the audacity to ask the professor questions after every class.  They may have asked the teaching assistant a few questions, but these TAs were often only marginally more familiar with the material than the students they oversaw.  Honestly, much (though not all) of this so-called learning involved rote, short-term memorization of facts.  If we students got something wrong on an assessment, it was our fault for not having understood the material from its single presentation (irrespective of how well it was presented or not reinforced).

The world is different today.  There are very few facts in the world that I cannot find in mere seconds using my computer or smartphone.  Virtually everything known is accessible to the world on the internet, though there are also a lot of misunderstandings on the internet portrayed as facts.

As I see it, universities have two potential educational roles in this new era (I'm not addressing research roles here).  The first is a service role to the community.  Universities have always been the storehouses of knowledge and understanding, but it's both arrogant and short-sighted for universities to perceive this role as exclusive to their students or in-field colleagues, particularly given the amount of public funding that they receive.  University faculty can serve their communities and the world by providing or "authenticating" facts, evidence, and diverse perspectives in their study areas through the internet and other media.  A university's role in dissemination is not symbolic of arrogance-- university faculty are regularly consulted by the media to interpret new findings or perspectives in their areas given their expertise and training, and this role is merely to be more pro-active.  The public's interest for such reliable sources is there-- if one is diagnosed with cancer, would one prefer to just Google "cancer" and look up information on whatever site comes up (perhaps "homecancerremedies.com")?  Or would one prefer to get information from the National Cancer Institute of the NIH?  Presumably the latter, and this example illustrates the public's perceived value of "authenticated" information.  Similarly, if I wanted to learn about genetics or psychology or economics or art history more broadly, I'd love to take a free online course (or "MOOC") from a practitioner who has an advanced degree in the area and was hired by a university as an expert in that area.  Neither of these features guarantee that the information will be presented coherently or that the presenter won't be wrong or that there aren't better resources, but it's a safer way to start the road to learning than a random internet search.  MOOCs are not the only means of public dissemination, but they are a good one that is both effective and engaging.  Freely providing knowledge is not only an important gesture by universities to their communities, but arguably an obligation, and it can also facilitate learning of their on-campus students (see below).

The second role I discuss is the university's primary one-- to help their enrolled students learn.  This learning can no longer be rote, short-term memorization of facts-- such "learning" trivializes the role of the university relative to the internet.  Instead, we need to engage with students directly, and in a manner that far exceeds what is possible through the internet or free online MOOCs.  Our courses need to go beyond fact dissemination-- we need to engage students both individually and in groups to assess how well they are interpreting and applying the concepts we're presenting them.  The flipped class is one means of achieving this goal-- students get the primary content in some way outside the class period, and their understanding is assessed.  This assessment step is critical-- students learn what elements of the material they didn't correctly interpret or apply the first time, and faculty receive feedback to correct frequent student misinterpretations and misapplications in their presentations.  The faculty then spend the class period clarifying areas of confusion directly in response to the student feedback, and then reinforcing true understanding of the material with new problems, applications, and engaging discussions.  The format forces faculty and students to interact bidirectionally in the learning process, and this bidirectionality has obvious benefits both to student understanding and faculty teaching strategies.  It's also personally satisfying for both parties, as faculty become less "lecturers" and more "facilitators" in the classroom, they work with the humanity of students rather than treating students as consumers of prepackaged products.  Relatedly, I've become a firm believer in "open-book" assessments, too, for two reasons-- 1) the world is essentially "open-book" so assessing in a situation where simple facts cannot be quickly checked is (usually) unrealistic, and 2) it forces the faculty member to produce questions that are not merely regurgitation of facts presented in the course, and thus better assess student "understanding" on a higher level.

None of what I've said above is novel or revolutionary.  However, many faculty and students are too comfortable with standard lecture formats for our classes (especially in the sciences and social sciences-- less-so in the humanities and interpretive social sciences) and are resistant to changing the roles, particularly given the upfront work involved.  While our time is limited, the goal of all universities (both students and faculty) should be to promote the best learning possible, so isn't this worth the investment?  Similarly, a lot of people view MOOCs as a threat to our universities-- we're giving away for free what students paid thousands of dollars to receive.  Some have said that MOOCs are a means for the "elite" universities to secure their position and displace others by disseminating content possibly (and often incorrectly) perceived  to the broader public as "better" than what a good state or liberal arts school may provide.  I argue that, if colleges or universities fail to provide opportunities for MUCH more mentoring and learning in their on-campus classes than what happens in topically equivalent MOOCs, they're wasting their students' time and money.  MOOCs can educate the public and can be a tool to enhance or supplement available on-campus classes, but they are no replacement for an on-campus undergraduate education should be.

Times have changed, and forward-thinking universities are beginning to change accordingly.  It's up to universities and their faculty to keep up with these changing times.  If universities don't change quickly, prospective students will soon figure out which schools are least likely to provide a return on their investments...