Will Richardson

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The End of Reform

May 15, 2013 By Will Richardson

Aaron Bady:

If I have one overarching takeaway point in this talk, it’s this: there’s almost nothing new about the kind of online education that the word MOOC now describes. It’s been given a great deal of hype and publicity, but that aura of “innovation” poorly describes a technology—or set of technological practices, to be more precise—that is not that distinct from the longer story of online education, and which is designed to reinforce and re-establish the status quo, to make tenable a structure that is falling apart.

Which is exactly the issue I have with how “flipped classrooms” are being marketed. They represent little that’s really new in terms of pedagogy and practice, and they “reinforce and re-establish the status quo.” In both cases, we’re turning small tweaks into transformation for the sake of being able to say “Look! Look! Things have really changed this time!”

This, of course, only resonates if what you want is a different way of schooling for modern times instead of a “better” way of schooling for old outcomes.

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