The debates are just beginning to boil. Last week, Georgia Tech plunged into the ether by announcing it will award a Master's degree in Computer Science to students who go through its program with Udacity.

Faculty around the U.S. are raising plenty of questions about what such programs will mean for them, their institutions and their students:

Dip a toe in the blogosphere and you will find plenty of thoughtful debate:



And a very thoughtful, 28-page exploration by Sir John Daniel published in September 2012 entitled: "MOOCs Making Sense of Musings in a Maze of Myth, Paradox and Possibility" in which he notes:



"A first myth is that university brand is a surrogate for teaching quality. It isn’t. The so-called elite universities that are rushing into xMOOCs gained their reputations in research. Nothing suggests that they are particularly talented in teaching, especially teaching online...We also agree with Bates that current xMOOCs pedagogy is pretty old hat but this will now change fast. Even if Coursera gave its partner universities great freedom in course formats in order to sugar the pill of signing the contract, this will quickly produce a great diversity of approaches and much healthy experimentation. By the end of 2012 various actors from the media through student groups to educational research units will be publishing assessments of xMOOC courses. These will quickly be consolidated into league tables that rank the courses--and the participating universities--by the quality of their offerings as perceived by both learners and educational professionals...This, in turn, will put a focus on teaching and pedagogy to which these institutions are unaccustomed, which will be healthy." (MFrom: "MOOCs Making Sense of Musings in a Maze of Myth, Paradox and Possibility")



This is hardly a comprehensive survey of the debate. Two EdSurge contributors weigh in this week, too: Joshua Kim of Dartmouth hopes that MOOCs will add momentum to efforts to improve teaching. Cathy N. Davidson of Duke aims to teach a MOOC about universities, with the goal of fostering more dialogue.



How about you? Weigh in--below or directly to us. As we said, the debate is just beginning.