MOOCs and Machines

When Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology sent ripples through the higher education world last week by announcinge dX, a joint platform for massive online versions of their courses, many observers took it as a boon for access. And indeed, edX — and other massive open online course (MOOC) projects, such as Coursera and Udacity, stand to give anyone with an Internet connection access to professors and courses that have been out of reach in the past.