Dear members of the list:
I was wondering what would be the views of the members of this list regarding the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) operated by Coursera, Udacity, edX and others with respect to geology courses. These online courses have been extremely popular and have had enrollments of thousands of students throughout the globe. In the case of geology, I noticed that Coursera will offer one called "Planet Earth" soon, but there are not many courses available. The nature of geology and other science courses is that there are laboratory and field components that cannot be taught online. What will be the future of teaching in universities with these advances in technology and teaching? Will courses in geology be taught as hybrids? In other words, theory taught online but laboratory and field work taught at universities? Thanks for any opinions shared on this topic.
Cheers,
Daniel
Daniel A. Laó Dávila, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Boone Pickens School of Geology
105 Noble Research Center
Oklahoma State University
Stillwater, OK 74078
Phone: (405) 744-7725
Fax: (405) 744-7841
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