Although I appreciate the survey, I would ask a different question: How can learning designs best promote (S) sustainability of learning, (C) learner cooperatives, (H) hybrid designs that offer various entry points for learners, (O) openness (reuse, revise, remix, & redistribute content, processes, etc.), (O) online synchronic/asynchronic learning, (L) networked, pedagogical patterns of learning achievement (SCHOOL).

When asking pedagogical questions about the effectiveness of MOOCs or the effectiveness of teaching thousands of students simultaneously, the tendency, IMHO, is to suggest that learning comes from a single individual or a predetermined set of individuals (i.e., teacher, facilitator, moderators, etc.). More often than not, instruction emerges from others through performance. Personal example: learning more in CCK08 through interaction, performance, and subsequent relationships with other educators I just had met than from the CCK08 facilitators themselves.

Also,asking pedagogical questions about the effectiveness of MOOCs or the effectiveness of teaching thousands of students simultaneously, assumes a direct cause-and-effect relationship between “teaching” among an individual or a set of individuals and learning (if an agreement of learning could even be had) among a different set of individuals. Cause-and-effect relationships are the antithesis to complex systems, which underpin any honest considerations to an effective, efficient, and engaging learning design. So, to ask questions related to “pedagogical effectiveness”, assume an “answer” in terms of a holistic set of aggregate associations whereby individuals are teaching and learning individually and connectively (recursively and mutually), adopting ideas, technologies, and relationships, and adapting to an ever-changing ideational, material, and relational (learning) ecosystem.

So, in reflecting on how networked pedagogical patterns might emerge in order to promote the greatest degree of learning across a network, I would refrain from forcing a K-12/MOOCish “dichotomy” into a discussion, since K-12 pedagogy addresses a direct cause-and-effect relationship where MOOCish designs lean towards a more holistic set of associations across a network.

In a SCHOOL environment (see above), it’s simple (albeit complex) to see how multiple (individual) case studies might begin to shed light on patterns that foster and hinder learning across a network. But such research relies on an epistemological, ontological, axiological worldview based on complexity, non-linear processes, and emergentism as its base.

Thank you for sharing the truth about the origins of MOOCs. It’s time, the pioneers got credit for what they did. I miss the connections we had as a result of those MOOCs.