Interesting article comparing Futurelearn to Facebook – who knows – stranger things have happened – but largely my experience with ‘edtech’ products is that they are rarely as good as ‘real-world’ products – which I’d rather students got experience of using.. although this guy was behind iPlayer which I use all the time…:
The UK’s first massive open online course platform has the potential to become a social networking site for the student community as popular as Facebook, according to its chief executive.
Unveiled as the launch CEO of Futurelearn in December, Simon Nelson has high hopes for the company, which is owned by The Open University and which will begin offering free online courses from a number of UK universities later this year.
“In three years’ time we hope to be offering a level of online learning that we can’t dream about at the moment,” he says.
“It may sound ridiculous in ambition, but one of my team said to me that in five or 10 years, rather than hanging out on Facebook of an evening, people will feel they can hang around in the Futurelearn product.
“Going into an online environment to learn is fun, social, an alternative to television and some of the other things you do for entertainment at night,” Nelson says.
Read full article.
