Yale University student Harry Larson is worked about Harvard Beating Yale…in terms of using MOOCs for innovative learning options:

Over the last year, headlines for more than one of the News’ articles on Yale’s online education efforts have included the word “cautious.” While Stanford, Harvard and MIT have dived headfirst into the world of MOOCs — Massive Open Online Courses — Yale has only offered four.

…But while Yale is right to be skeptical of the power of unproven techniques to cure all that ails higher education, I wish it would be more ambitious taking advantage of technology within its own classes. In particular, I wonder why, in 2013, such a large portion of our course offerings is comprised of traditional, noninteractive lectures.

Physical lectures may offer some marginal benefits over online versions. They provide structure that videos lack and offer students the opportunity to ask questions. And they maintain a certain interpersonal component. One of my professors this semester often breaks into short tangents in lecture to playfully mock a Teaching Fellow or to ask a student why he was late. He explained to me once that many of his comments — often tossed out with a careless air — are part of a conscious strategy to encourage his students’ active attention and engagement.

Still, none of these arguments really explain why Yale’s approach to lectures hasn’t evolved with technology. While a traditional class may provide some students with structure, for others who regularly miss lectures, online recordings could increase viewership. As for offering a platform for students’ questions, many lectures I’ve been in don’t seem to provide one. Even when lecturers do take questions, the result is often interruptions that most students find irritating and unnecessary. As for the idea that students in a room may be more engaged than those plugged into a laptop — well, that may very well be true. But that brings me to the most exciting aspect of the promise of online lectures. They leave space for professors and students to make better use of their time in the classroom.

…Online courses are rightly heralded as possible game-changers for the structure of higher education. But even more important is the potential that online material has to improve the quality of our physical classes. It’s time for Yale to make that potential a reality.