ABSTRACT
This chapter starts by looking at fully automated online instruction using recorded videos and automatically graded exercises, then explores some alternative hybrid models. The highest-profile effort to reinvent education using the Internet is the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). The term “MOOC” was quickly co-opted by creators of courses more closely resembled the hub-and-spoke model of a traditional classroom, with the teacher at the center defining goals and the learners seen as recipients or replicators of knowledge. A prominent feature of most MOOCs is their use of recorded video lectures. The key to making any form of online teaching effective is therefore to facilitate peer-to-peer interactions. Online and asynchronous teaching are both still in their infancy. Fully automated teaching is only one way to use the web in teaching. Centralized MOOCs may prove to be an evolutionary dead end, but there are still many other promising models to explore.
