I must be stupid. I have two degrees, yet I think education is completely overrated. I vowed after completing my Masters, ‘that’s it with studying!’ As my kids enter formal schooling, I am moving the other way – less structure, less rote, fewer rules of engagement, more serendipity, less linear, more networked, more curiosity, less right and wrong, more maybe and let’s see and who knows?

The one-person university Maria Popova records Frank Lloyd Wright’s lament: 

“The present education system is the trampling of the herd.”

Brain Pickings, she continued,

“became the record of my alternative learning, of that cross-disciplinary curiosity that took me from art to psychology to history to science, by way of the myriad pieces of knowledge I discovered — and connected — on my own.”

Yeah, what she said. University of Life, and all that.

Yet, here I am today, the proud possessor of a certificate from the Santa Fe Institute having completed a course that is online, open, and massive! MOOC!

I wanted to see if MOOCs were really an invitation to the future of education, and I chose a course that is edge work – on complexity.

Self-directed, light and rich in content, interactive with smart people sharing their knowledge in conversation, quizzes that engage and invite you in.  The content modules are random and stand alone; yet networked and overlaid.

The process was unstuffy, there was a clear sense of co-creation among faculty and with the student body (though I crammed the course and did not participate in forums). It felt quite liberating, like the course was mine alone. I am tempted to go back for more. MOOCs wins the day.

←This Much (MOOC) We Know.→