Disrupt This!

MOOCs and the Promises of Technology

Karen J. Head

• Publisher: University Press of New England
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781512600506
• eBook ISBN:
  9781512600926
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

In this smart and incisive work, Karen J. Head describes her experience teaching a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) and the attendant pressure on professors, especially those in the humanities, to embrace new technologies in the STEM era. And yet, as she argues, MOOCs are just the latest example of the near-religious faith that some universities have in the promise of technological advances. As a teacher of rhetoric, Head is well versed at sniffing out the sophistry embedded in the tech jargon increasingly rife in the academy. Disrupt This! is a broader-based critique of the promises of technological "disruption" and the impact of Silicon Valley thinking on an unsuspecting, ill-prepared, and often gullible university community grasping for relevance, while remaining in thrall to the technologists.

Index

Abelard, Peter, 16, 18–19, 105, 140

academic colonialism, 106, 145–47

access to online services, 84–86, 92

accreditation, 58–60, 134

acknowledgments, rhetorical use of, 17–18

adjunct (nontenured or contingent) faculty, 1, 54–55, 118–23, 135, 138

Advanced Placement (AP) exams, 7, 55, 96–97

Alda, Alan, 103–4, 118

Alexander the Great, 152

Allston Campus, Harvard University, 131

American College Testing (ACT), 91

American Council on Education (ACE), 41, 75

Angry Birds, 150

Aniston, Jennifer, 104

Anselm of Canterbury, 105

appearance and clothing of instructor, 83, 109–14, 137

Apple, 16

apprenticeship model at Georgia Tech, 128

Aristotle, 45, 152

Arizona State University, 127

arts, social sciences, and humanities, 69–70, 97

assessment and value determination, 90–102; accreditation, 58–60, 134; business theory applied to higher education, 60–62; certificates and certification, 40–41, 56, 58–60, 74–77, 97; consumer viewpoint of students, 77–79; fragmentation of learning and, 96–98; machine grading, 98–102; peer review, 47–48, 98; platform limitations and, 92–94; process skills, difficulties with assessing, 94–96; standardized testing, 90–94, 96–97

Association of American Universities (AAU), 101

Atatürk, Kemal, 84

AT&T, 80

Bady, Aaron, 31

Balch, Tucker, 2, 23

Beard, Mary, 112

Beckham, David, 104

Berkeley, University of California at, 46, 150

Bharucha, Jhamshed, 135

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 3, 8, 21–22, 24–25, 27, 39, 63–64, 96

Blackboard, 159

Bloom’s Taxonomy, 94

Bogost, Ian, 46–47

Bok, Derek, 144

Bonk, Curtis, 10

Bras, Rafael, 2, 25

Brittain Postdoctoral Teaching Fellowship Program, Georgia Tech, 1, 120

Brooks, David, 32

Burnett, Rebecca, 3, 21, 22, 23, 39

Business Insider, 67

business theory applied to higher education, 52–68; alliances, ecosystems, and outside constituencies, 62–65; competition, valorization of, 65–68; disruptive innovation and, 29–32, 37–38; efficiency and quality issues, 58–60; factory met...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Prologue: How Did a Nice Girl Like You Wind Up Here?
• One: The Rhetoric of Punditry
• Two: My Educational Journey: A Brief Interlude
• Three: Sweet Disruption
• Four: Talking Business in Higher Education
• Five: Welders, Not Philosophers
• Six: Only the Countable Counts
• Seven: The Superstar Professor
• Eight: The Harvard Mystique
• Nine: Missionary Creep
• Epilogue: Balancing My Parentheses
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index