Open Yale Courses and the Cult of the Magical Sage (Part 1)

The launch of Open Yale Courses has generated attention and praise as a step forward in the open education movement which enables students to be "as close to being there as online technology allows", according to a Chronicle of Higher Education article . After looking at a few of the lectures, my initial reaction is rather less enthusiastic. What's most striking to me about the Open Yale courses is how clearly they embody the belief in the magical sage-on-the-stage.

The launch of Open Yale has generated a lot of discussion on various listservs, including DEOS-L, Sloan-C and the Chronicle article discussion itself. The launch has its merits; as my colleague Larry Arvan has pointed out, these materials may be valuable for students who are taking a similar course at other institutions and are seeking additional insight or another perspective on the subject; for faculty teaching a comparable course who seek other ideas or alternative approaches to the material; or adult learners who are looking for non-credit enrichment or self-improvement learning experiences. As they roll out their courses, I hope that Open Yale publicly provides data on the success of their program in providing access to learning for such purposes.

However, as to the notion that Open Yale courses may somehow
"redefine expectations for online learning," we can only hope that this never happens. My criticisms of the Open Yale courses centers on three main areas: the quality of delivery in the Open Yale video lectures; the notion that these video lectures + ancillary materials constitute "courses"; and the notion that these courses represent anything near state-of-the-art in online delivery. It's the quality of the video lectures that most clearly reveals the cult of the magical sage at work. More on that in the next post...