An article on the way MOOCs are (or may be) changing university priorities: "What MOOCs Will, Won’t, and Might Do".
He says many faculty members have been more focused on research instead of teaching in the past. Open education classes are changing that. Because of MOOCs and Princeton’s upcoming participation in Coursera, “The conversations about teaching (at Princeton) have gone from 0 to 60 on our campus,” he says. Princeton faculty who used to brush off discussions geared toward improving their teaching are now eager to have such discussions, he says.
Much discussion of this concept around right now. I think that there is great potential here, to redirect resources to allow each faculty member to teach the material in which she or he is most expert, and to enable students to learn introductory material from the best teachers. But that would really take a shift away from the idea that you need a single faculty member in the classroom 3 hours a week for a whole semester.
