A Bill of Rights to protect students’ interests in the age of MOOCs

23 January, 2013

moocLast month, 12 of the most renowned educators and experts in online-education, met in Palo Alto, Ca. to discuss about the future of higher education in the digital age. They created a document with the title A Bill of Rights and Principles for Learning in the Digital Age, which not only contains the necessary philosophical framework to protect the interests of students in online education, but also defines the necessary rights and obligations in the relationships between providers and users of online educational environments such as MOOCs.

This Bill of Rights states that students have a right to know how data collected about their participation in the online system will be used by the organization and made available to others, so the provider should offer clear explanations of the privacy implications of students choices.

“The idea is to have a larger conversation about this so that MOOCs don’t become the Facebook or Instagram of higher education – where you sign up for some free service and it turns out that you’re the product being sold” 

“The problem is, it’s been such a short time span and there’s so much hype around MOOCs, and some of the terms and agreements around MOOCs are so ill defined and changing and amorphous that no one knows what the business models are”   – Cathy N. Davidson

 Image by | cathleen nardi

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