Interview: Coursera Co-Founder Daphne Koller “Makes Case for MOOCs”

A Q&A style interview with Coursera co-founder Daphne Koller has been published by the Wall St. Journal. It includes video.
From the Interview:

Daphne Koller, co-founder and co-chief executive of the Mountain View, Calif., company, insists Coursera isn’t looking to supplant traditional colleges. Instead, she wants the free Web courses to improve the educational experience for students at cash-strapped public schools and enhance learning for midcareer professionals and those without access to postsecondary education. And she wants to make money in the process by charging for certificates of completion, among other things.

The interview includes seven questions/answer exchanges. Here’s one of them.

WSJ: You call MOOCs a transformative, not disruptive, force in education. Why?
Ms. Koller: We actually are big believers in the educational system. And while we think the system is long overdue for an overhaul, we don’t want to throw it away and start from scratch.
Some of the instructors in our university partnerships are just amazingly gifted scholars, researchers and teachers. We think that the university played a critical role in shaping [those scholars]. If you throw out the university, who’s going to produce scholars like these?
What we hope and believe will happen is that the role of teachers will change. A teacher will have more time to spend teaching, as opposed to spending time in content development and preparation and in grading endless repetitions of the same assignment. Students will come to class to actually have meaningful, engaged dialogue with other students and the instructors.

Read the Complete Interview, View Video
See Also: Listen Online: Coursera Co-Founder Andrew Ng Discusses MOOCs in CBC Interview (March 8, 2013)
See Also: Massive Open Opportunity: Supporting MOOCs in Public and Academic Libraries (Library Journal; May 13, 2013)
See Also: “MOOC Completion Rates Below 7%” (May 10, 2013)
See Also: Gallup Survey Findings: College Presidents “Not Strong Supporters” of MOOCs (May 2, 2013)

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