Emerging alongside the open educational resources movement of the past decade, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been widely heralded as advancing cause of providing increased access to higher education. The article explores the implications of the recommendation by the American Council on Education (ACE) to offer college credit for a…

Surely "massive open online course" (MOOC) has one of the ugliest acronyms of recent years, lacking the deliberate playfulness of Yahoo (Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle) or the droll shoulder shrug suggested by the word "snafu" (Situation Normal, All Fouled Up). The author is not a complete neophyte to online…

The answer to massification in higher education lies not in paper-behind-glass style e-learning. Such courses lack the necessary interaction to ensure success. There are perceived upper limits to where e-learning can be up scaled to accommodate large classes. The Community of Inquiry framework provides a convenient instrument to assess the quality…

The implementation of problem-based learning (PBL) and other inquiry-driven educational techniques is often resisted by both faculty and students, who may not be comfortable with this learning/instructional style. We present here a hybrid approach, which combines elements of expository education with inquiry-driven laboratory exercises and…