A couple of recent blog posts by Higher Education Strategy Associates President Alex Usher on the subject of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)  got me thinking about the relationship between MOOCs and learning outcomes.

(Learning outcomes refers to the practice of identifying what students are expected to know, understand, and be able to do as a result of completing an educational course or program.)
 
Last week, Usher commented on the pedagogical limitations of MOOCs.

He drew on the analysis of education technology expert Tony Bates who has criticized MOOCs for using “behaviourist pedagogy” that makes it “extremely difficult if not impossible to teach higher order skills of critical thinking, creative thinking, and original thinking.”  
 
Yet, as he points out, these are the skills that are most needed in our knowledge-based society. (In addition to problem-solving and research skills, I would argue.)
 
Not only do I share Bates’ views but, like Usher, I do not see many MOOCs being able to break out of this mold anytime soon.
 
This leaves universities, with their commitments to cultivating these higher-order skills, in a good position to reinforce the benefits of their programs. 

Yet how are we to demonstrate that what we provide students is qualitatively superior to that provided by MOOCs?
 
A glance at a traditional Canadian university calendar or course syllabus confirms the focus is often heavily tilted towards describing the content of the course and the basic knowledge that is being taught.  
 
The extent to which a course is designed to help students cultivate critical thinking, problem-solving or research skills in relation to that knowledge is not always stated explicitly and is often difficult to discern.
 
University calendars and syllabi presented in this way make it equally difficult to glean the difference in worth between MOOCs and university courses, since MOOCs, as Bates suggests, are very proficient at transmitting and evaluating basic factual knowledge and its compartmentalized application.
 
How, then, do we demonstrate this value difference?  
 
The obvious answer is for us to be explicit in communicating the learning outcomes that we expect students to gain from our courses.
 
If our goal is to equip students with aptitudes to think critically, solve problems and conduct research – if these are the things that we most cherish about our programming and most clearly distinguish it from MOOCs – then surely it makes no sense to withhold these learning outcomes from the course descriptions we provide to our students and communicate to the public.
 
In a separate blog post last week, Usher made another useful point about the relationship between learning outcomes and MOOCs.  
 
Not only do learning outcomes expose the strengths of universities over MOOCs, but MOOCs, he argues, are actually incompatible with a commitment to learning outcomes at a program level.  
Universities, he points out, deliver academic programs that focus on the overall development of students, ensuring that during their courses of study they acquire “a particular body of knowledge and skills” that comprises the learning outcomes associated with that program.  
 
MOOCs, on the other hand, are based on an unstructured “smorgasbord" approach to education, which fails to ensure that "knowledge and skills are built upon in a consistent way throughout a student’s course of study.”                  
 
The implications of this insight again seem obvious.  
 
If we believe that universities are superior to MOOCs because they deliver programs that ensure students gain an appropriate mix of disciplinary knowledge and skills that best serves their needs and those of society, surely the most effective way to demonstrate this is to ensure that university program-level learning outcomes are clearly identified and well known.
 
What all of this suggests is that a commitment to learning outcomes, driven by faculty and grounded in established academic principles, is the best bulwark not only against those outside the university who might seek to impose learning outcomes upon us, but also against those who might incorrectly think that MOOCs provide a desirable, low-cost alternative to university education.