MOOCs vs MOCs

[Paul Siegel]

Maybe wrongly, but I think of " an OC" as simply a very valuable tool to bring high quality education to the world. What a great export industry where the leading centers of intellectual property (such as US, UK, Germany, Canada, Australia...) has so much to provide others.. And, in a much better and easier way than every before.

But, why is "Open" a necessary ingredient? Open = free. Are valuable pharmaceutical products that cost $10s of millions to research (though pennies to produce) given away for free? Is there any evidence whatsoever that this stimulates people to innovate?

How about "Massive Online and Pretty Darn Inexpensive Courses" (MOPDIC). Yeah, right. Not very catchy, but isn't this the model that is the real end-game? Don't we want EVERYONE in the world to have access to great education at REASONABLE price? Fail, cost-effective in local terms and world class?

This next paragraph is an advertisement, so skip over it if you must. I run a "MOC" which provides all the video, discussion, interaction features of Coursera, EDX and the others. We focus on 1 vertical sector: financial services. We are NOT free and we have hundreds of hours of finance stills education for graduate students and working professionals (www.globecon.com).

We have put about $7mm into our technology from friends and family and we have significant revenues. Anyone who wants to provide insights to us in how to do it better, please send me an email: paul....@globecon.com.