The Audacity Of Udacity - Michael Horn, Forbes

Why people thought that the massive open online course (MOOC) providers would disrupt U.S. higher education by themselves by simply offering traditional university courses online for free has never made much sense. Yet judging from many of the pieces that have been published since Udacity announced its alleged “pivot” to focus on providing learning opportunities that integrate tightly with employer needs, that’s what many people thought. As a result, Udacity’s recent announcement, which didn’t only focus on doubling down on the link with employers, but also a change in its “course” experience as well as the ability for students to pay to have an experience beyond the classic definition of MOOC that is a more robust vision of online learning with human support and learning freed from the limits of time and place, makes Udacity not less audacious and disruptive, but even more so. http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelhorn/2013/12/12/the-audacity-of-udacity/