The New York Times
November 19, 2012
Teaching Introduction to Sociology
is almost second nature to Mitchell Duneier, a professor at Princeton:
he has taught it 30 times, and a textbook he co-wrote is in its eighth
edition. But last summer, as he transformed the class into a free online
course, he had to grapple with some brand-new questions: Where should
he focus his gaze while a camera recorded the lectures? How could the
40,000 students who enrolled online share their ideas? And how would he
know what they were learning?
In many ways, the arc of Professor Duneier’s evolution, from professor
in a lecture hall to online instructor of tens of thousands, reflects a
larger movement, one with the potential to transform higher education.
Already, a handful of companies are offering elite college-level
instruction — once available to only a select few, on campus, at great
cost — free, to anyone with an Internet connection.
Moreover, these massive open online courses, or MOOCs, harness the power
of their huge enrollments to teach in new ways, applying crowd-sourcing
technology to discussion forums and grading and enabling professors to
use online lectures and reserve on-campus class time for interaction
with students.
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