From MOOCs to OCs

“When I called a MOOC a lousy product Iwasn’t kidding,” says Sebastian Thrun, the prime mover of the modern MOOC movement and the vast hypethat came to surround it, in a new interview at Pando Daily. The fatal flaw in the “classic MOOC,” Thrun now says, is that it was free. You can only have a decent MOOC if you get rid of the MO and just have the OC.

“It’s not a MOOC [anymore] because we end up charging for it,” Thrun says, in describing the new online courses offered by his company, Udacity,...