To what extent will online education replace brick-and-mortar education in the next 10 years?

Here are the most common pedagogical (ways to teach and learn) criticisms of the MOOC, and why I think they are a little unfounded:The learning environment online is less effective than the lecture hallLet’s comparte the MOOC to the ubiquitous first year lecture, which at most colleges consists of one professor talking at hundreds of undergrads, as this is most often the types of courses that are to be “replaced”. Think about the lecture hall, is it really the best environment for learning? A professor or instructor stands at the front of the room and talks about a subject, possibly accompanied by a set of powerpoint slides to illustrate abstract concepts or summarize the key talking points. Can students ask questions? Sometimes, but it is logistically impossible for every student query to be addressed. Does it facilitate discussion and conversation? The instructor may throw out a question and ask for a couple responses, but a large lecture is not really build for the type of in depth discussion that constructivists propose as the key for higher order learning.Does the transformation online really take away anything from this learning experience? The instructor generally is recorded talking over a set of slides, exactly like they would in the physical classroom. Can students ask questions and get into a discussion? Generally there is a question section in a MOOC space where students can ask questions and discuss topics, and the asynchronous nature of this conversation allows for more individuals to propose their thoughts than would be possible in a physical class with a 2 or 3 hour time limit. Although the thoroughness of the discussion possible may be hindered by having to write thoughts in a forum as opposed to voicing them aloud, it is not any worse than the traditional lecture.Another beneficial aspect of the online learning environment is the instructor themselves. When many students look back on their favourite teacher, they often think of the most personable, passionate, and charismatic teachers as the most effective. This makes sense, as these types of teachers can make the material ‘come alive’ without having to rely on slides or any other aid. Not every instructor is like this, but online, students from all over the world can all benefit from gaining access to the best instructors available.Think of it this way; having an instructor teach Psychology 101 at the more than two thousand four year colleges in the US is like having two thousand news anchors in a small town deliver the news to local families in their kitchens. Doesn’t make much sense, does it? Some of these families might get stuck with a down right terrible anchor drone on about their local election while they are trying to eat dinner! What would make more sense would be to pick the best anchor out of all two thousand, put him or her on TV, and broadcast it out to every home in the community. The local station saves money, and each home benefits from having the best of the best deliver the news. Are the introductory courses in higher education really any different?Students are more motivated in personThe other ingredient in the “students won’t perform as well” recipe is that people assume students will be less focused and motivated to pay attention to the content when they are online as opposed to in the lecture hall. But are students that focused in person to begin with? In a class of hundreds, there certainly isn’t any more incentive to go to lecture than to watch an online video, it’s not like the instructor is going to notice if students are attending the lectures or not. In fact, the flexibility of online courses allows for students to engage with the content at their convenience; if they are busy or distracted one day they can still view the content the next day. If a student is busy or distracted during a lecture — although they can usually access the powerpoint slides after the fact — they permanently miss the way in which the instructor contextualizes the slides and expands on their content.Another criticism of the online course is that — because it is online — students will automatically end up on facebook before finishing the content. First of all, as highlighted above, even if a student does go to facebook they have the opportunity to finish viewing the content later. And secondly, the computer is now ubiquitous in the lecture hall anyways; the view from the podium is often a sea of illuminated apple icons. Students now have the chance to be distracted by the internet anywhere, this is not going to be affected by whether the course is online as well.What does affect student distraction levels is how engaging the content is. Whether the content is online or in-person, having an engaging instructor present a topic in an interesting way is a sure-fire way to motivate students to pay attention. The popularity of documentary films in young adults seems to bolster this point.As has hopefully been highlighted, the MOOC is not less pedagogically correct than its in person counterpart. In fact, it’s asynchronous nature, and widespread accessibility means that it may, when designed effectively, bring even better outcomes to a much wider audience.However, others are correct in that it doesn’t matter how good the MOOCs are in theory, the market forces have to align to push it into the mainstream.

I think blended learning will rock in the future mixing both online advantages and face-to-face advantages of traditional learning making it more advanced. As said both the medium of education has its own plus and minus points. Therefore, it would be better to combine benefits of both online and traditional learning that could benefit students.

In a country like India, where millions of graduates are churned out every year, it is becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate oneself in a highly competitive job hunting environment. Further, there are large number of working professionals who are not be able to leave jobs to upskill or reskill themself as the absence of work to get education will not result in adequate increase in salaries. In such a scenario, online education will make sense for a large demographic which will be looking to either differentiate themselves to enter job market or reskill/upskil themselves to stay productive. At EduKart.com, we have witnessed a decent traction at the end of first year - people who paid for courses as they did  not have time to pursue full time brick and mortar courses.

From the early days of OCW at MIT flirting with making quality online higher education available freely to recent initiatives like EDX and online courses from Coursera etc. we've come a long  long way. The concept of MOOCs is completely turning the higher education space on its head. Online courses today are far more immersive, engaging and use tools that were impossible even a couple of years back. Clearly the potential exists to have online education completely change the way we educate ourselves as society. Personally I believe the impact of MOOCs on our society once the concept really takes off can be as dramatic as the introduction of the printing press. However there are some really deep challenge see that need to be addressed before MOOCs as a concept takes off. I will list what I see as those challenges here before I elaborate on them in my next edit 1) MOOCs are not considered equivalent to formal courses yet This is a minor but significant block that impedes growth of MOOCs. 2) MOOCs have very poor completion rates 3) MOOCs do not yet completely utilize the power of interactive tools that go beyond classroom videos and quizzes

don't worry it will not replace it. It helps to provide quality education to more people. hybrid model to sell videos tutorials or educational product [Online + Offline] will be future.selling videos tutorials, eLearning courses, MOOCs offline is also a big market.educational products scope in rural market is huge. read full answer on quora - Happy learning.

I think it depends on how traditional schools adapt and offer oniline as a compliment/addition to their current curriculum.  I recently received my BA online 20 years after I failed miserably as a freshman at a traditional university. If online hadn't been an option I still would not have my degree.  One of the previous answers spoke of how students graduating high school would never opt for an online education. I agree, but not because of the quality of the education. I feel it is more because of the experiences that come from being away from home and meeting new people. A factor to consider is how large companies could influence the trend. I predict an evolution in how employers train end educate.   Companies can partner with online institutions in ways that were not possible with traditional education institutions. Degrees and certifications can be customized to support a specific business or industry. Savings can occur as students have an option to lean while simultaneously working in their chosen field, and employers can potentially hire from a pool of candidates that have the works skills and education required. The "social" experience traditionally presented to young adults at college could now come from the workplace.

I would like to give another perspective on this topic- one from technology point of view. We are one of the https://www.paradisosolutions.com/ (Learning management system) companies and we get universities and individuals asking every week about how they can go ¨online¨ and still make money. We also have universities who wants to offer CEU credits to adults at reasonable costs, they want to leverage online education.My personal opinion from talking to 100s of entrepreneurs and schools technology teams is that eventually most of the education will be online except for labs and other things. But there is interim step which is https://www.paradisosolutions.com/blended-learning-LMS , the college campus socialization will be replaced by discussion forums and blogs (just like traditional dating changed to online dating) , on top of that https://www.paradisosolutions.com/solutions/virtual-classroom-lms-platform is making the transition easier…all of this will add up to more of flipped classroom model. Most of the traditional lecturing will be more of a novelty like snail mail. Mobile learning will be huge, so will be just-in-time learning.Bottom line, the advances in LMS, virtual classroom and mobile technology will just speed up the transition.

I'm thinking that if MOOCs can be "WIKI-fied" to allow the greatest number of people the ability to contribute and change course material in the most convenient way possible, then it would allow MOOCs to iteratively improve/evolve into the most appealing form of instruction, as compared to traditional alternatives. At some point, just like Wikipedia superceded Britannica, or Amazon surpassed Barnes & Noble, the MOOCs would outpace traditional educational offerings. Indeed, traditional educators might then draw from MOOCs to supplement their curricula, just as Britannica today even cites Wikipedia's knowledge store. Accreditation and assessment would always be kept separate, of course. I'm picturing that MOOCs could offer many different tutorial/lecture options for the same lessons. Discriminating consumers could then exercise their choice on how to ingest the relevant knowledge in a way that best works for them. The detailed metrics that could be collected from online user-facing systems would allow identification of different learner types, and tailoring of educational materials into different forms or styles best geared for each type, to ensure maximum learning success. Traditional institutions today seem quite far from this approach. While traditional institutions tout the need for face-to-face interaction with an instructor, future alternatives in conjunction with MOOCs could offer peer-to-peer "Social Learning" as a supplement or substitute for reduced teacher-student interaction. You and your study-buddies will figure out a lot of things together collaboratively, before taking your questions to a teacher as a last resort.

Online education will continue to help self ,privates learners advance themselves in ways they may not have previously had available. But education is not just about those people, who would probably succeed regardless, education is also about the students who are unmotivated, who have limited resources, whose parents do not push them, etc...I'm not sure how online education will do a better job of reaching them.