MOOCs and the distance-learning mirage

“I feel like there’s a red pill and a blue pill, and you can take the blue pill and go back to your classroom and lecture your 20 students. But I’ve taken the red pill, and I’ve seen Wonderland.” –Sebastian Thrun, 2012

Now that we’ve begun to talk of MOOCs retrospectively, I think the time has come to update my previously published surveyof the history of hype that has for more than a century surrounded distance-learning technologies. I am adding a new entry to the list. I suspect it won’t be...