Professors & MOOCs

As long as the expanding of MOOCs, debating about MOOC among professors never ceased. There are different opinions which mainly because the different roles that professors play in MOOCs. As we know,the professors who teach a course on MOOCs mostly come from famous and wealthy universities.On the one hand, the prestige of the universities and the professors is a guarantee of high enrollment of the courses; on the other hand, famous and wealthy universities have the strength to operate MOOC courses. However,the second or third level colleges or universities are hard to operate this kind of learning platform, because their relatively weaker academic and economic strength, and also their less prestige don't prepare them well to compete with famous universities in education on MOOCs. From this sense, the meaning of MOOC to these two general kinds of professors is different, which can be a reason for their debates.
As to the rock star professors, who are famous and popular on MOOCs, they obtain a new platform to spread the influences of their teaching and enhance their academic status.They choose to participate in MOOCs also because they are willingness to provide free or cheaper but high qualities learning opportunities for more students who have access to a MOOC around the world; they also want to stand on the leading edge of the educational development; and increase their visibility (The Minds Behind the MOOCs). Certainly, some teachers open courses on MOOC because of their superiors suggestions or command more than their own willingness. However, other professors who don't want to join MOOCs think that teaching a course on MOOC distract their attentions from their normal on-campus duties because preparing a course on MOOC needs a lot of time; and they thought it is a threat to professors' intellectual property (Threats); meanwhile, they think that professor who have real interests and vigorous attitudes toward education won't teach course like the way on MOOCs, which just using shorting lectures and some quiz; they highlight the interactions between teacher and students or between students in traditional education, and also personalized education which is impossible on MOOC (The MOOC Racket). Some professors don't support inviting MOOC courses into universities or colleges.From their opinions, it will threaten the normal faculties interests in traditional education. As ordinary faculties, they can't play a role on MOOCs easily, for the reason that the students on MOOC are centralized to famous teachers, the market to ordinary faculties is very limited.In order to protect their own interests and academic rigorous,some of them show definite objection to inviting MOOC courses into school.

In my opinion, if people invite a lot of courses provided by MOOCs into school, it definitely will influence some faculties' interests. At the same time, it also has influences on  professors' daily work in local schools who open courses on MOOCs. However, I believe that introducing courses from MOOCs to schools is not easy, because it will met a lot of conflicts. Professors who teach both in schools and on MOOCs have time conflicts which is not easy to solve; and their intellectual property faces threat;  the work they need to do for teaching a course on MOOC can't give them appropriate economic return at present; meanwhile, it must exist many professors who hold objective opinions toward MOOCs because of the shortcomings of MOOC and the problems it may arouse in the future, especially about credits awarding from it.