Crow makes a case for digital learning in op-ed

In a recent op-ed for the science journal Nature, Arizona State University President Michael M. Crow explores how massive open online courses (MOOCs) can make higher education more accessible, immersive and comprehensive, if deployed with due caution.

Crow compares academia and media responses to this new, digital form of learning with the hysteria that would have followed an alien invasion in 1950s sci-fi movies. “Folks fear the unknown,” he says.

After citing some letters written by various universities’ faculty members expressing their hesitance to embrace MOOCs, Crow offers his take on their concerns: “What these letters identify is the lingering ambivalence in academia towards the transition from teaching and learning, based on the fifteenth-century technology of the printed word, to twenty-first-century interactive technologies that offer the potential for adaptive, personalized learning on an infinite scale.”

Crow argues that, because “the art of learning has already changed completely...we must lead and shape this revolution, not recoil from it, if we are to avoid stifling innovation.”

Read the full op-ed at the link below.