One role that faculty groups can play is to ensure that MOOCs aren’t touted as a cost-cutting device for traditional universities, said Brown, the professor at CSU Sacramento. A dangerous scenario that Brown envisions: Super professors at elite universities replacing lectures by faculty members at other universities. “That would represent a de-skilling of the faculty. It would harm faculty morale and engagement, and it would reduce the dynamism and intellectual excitement of the classroom experience for students. It would also give administrators an excuse to increase teaching loads and reduce faculty pay,” he said. And if this happened, the faculty member would be nothing but a teaching assistant for the online professor, Brown said.
Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/05/23/faculty-groups-consider-how-respond-moocs#ixzz1vgzfQC2H
Inside Higher Ed
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/05/23/faculty-groups-consider-how-respond-moocs
