This word 'globalization' often appears when forces from far away change or disrupt something we've long loved at home. Of course, the very concepts of home and away get altered by these forces that seem to blur so many boundaries.Recently, the college classroom seems both enhanced and threatened by a new form of globalization that Tom Friedman writes about in today's NYT. Another article appears in the business section here. MOOCS or massive open online courses offer anyone anywhere free, global online access to courses taught by the best university professors. My experience with the students pictured here who lost most of a year of study to a strike by professors at Cheik Anta Diop University in Dakar shows the need for access to education. They came to my class voluntarily in this classroom with broken windows and shutters, plywood tables screwed into the floor, and a chalk less blackboard painted onto the wall. Obviously, there were no computers and no internet access, the requirements for participation in a MOOC. They knew they would be responsible for the exams with or without classes. And they were right. Still, all of these students have Facebook pages and therefore internet access. Yet Friedman and other note that access isn't enough. Will they and others like them overcome the language barriers? Will they have the drive to stick with online classes or to organize themselves into study groups? Yet he notes many encouraging signs in his typically pro-globalization manner.
Many commentators have imagined the transformative potential of free global higher education. However others see threats to lower tier colleges by brand name MOOC certificates from MIT or Harvard or Stanford that undermine traditional education in second or third tier institutions. Perhaps one defining criteria of globalization is this kind of dual disruption. Here, global digital access to amazing educational content cuts both ways, boosting individuals and threatening institutions. Given Elvis' broad self-education efforts in the novel Graceland, it's easy to imagine he might have made good use of this kind of opportunity.
