The Real Precipice in Higher Education is not MOOCs - Richard Holmgren, Inside Higher Ed

More than 10 years ago, Herb Simon, the Carnegie Mellon University professor and Nobel laureate, declared, "Improvement in postsecondary education will require converting teaching from a solo sport to a community-based research activity." The Open Learning Initiative (OLI) is an outgrowth of that vision and has been striving to realize it for more than a decade. Teams of cognitive scientists, technology consultants, designers, and disciplinary specialists are designing interactive, online courses that are available now from OLI. The program uses the latest research in cognitive science to inform course design, and it tests each element of the design by evaluating its effectiveness in promoting student learning. Creating such courses is capital-intensive, but since students interact solely with the computer when taking the course, the marginal cost to deliver the course to each additional student is minimal. http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2013/04/15/essay-how-technology-and-new-ways-teaching-could-upend-colleges-traditional-models