On the Language of Internet Memes

When the report “Researching Online Education” (quoted and linked below) was released, a couple people contacted me.  “Tell them what’s really going on in collaborative learning!  Tell them what we really know from research!”  I looked at their report and concluded that the work I’ve done and am most familiar with doesn’t really have much to do with what they’re exploring.  I don’t know much about business models in on-line collaborative learning.  I do think that some of the work that I did 10-20 years ago in computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) is relevant for today’s MOOCs and other on-line learning experiments.

The work led us to a few hypotheses: (1) We’re skeptical a business model that charges for content will work at scale and in the long run. (2) We expect education platforms that offer vertical content and/or specific education experiences will be more successful than horizontal platforms, though we…