Since the term “disruptive” has come to be associated with Clay Christensen’s model, there might be something closer to a reappropriation model like Hippies appropriating VW Beetles, Roadsworth painting pedestrian crossings into zippers, or circuit benders making musical instruments out of old toys. Somewhere, someone may subvert a MOOC into something useful. In fact, Arshad Ahmad once described a successful MOOC which had lost its instructors. Learners started owning their learning activities.

Alan Levine’s comment also needs to be kept for posterity:

I so appreciate the framing of this history for the oMOOC (Original) as "courses of lectures" which seems not focused on the lectures but the discussions generated. And thanks for the mention of the ds106 assignment bank (a concept I seem to suggest in every project) but I must make a small historical credit. Grant Potter was definitely part of the foundation, but his great contribution was DS106 Radio. The person who credit for the Assignment Bank must go to is Martha Burtis who did this and more for co-creating DS106, but she's often invisible in the Shadow of Groom. I did the archeology on the Assignment Bank history: http://cogdogblog.com/2016/10/ds106-history-details/ I dream that someone would fund you to roll out the model described, maybe it's a dMOOC (Downsian) not that it would likely overtake the xMOOC Hype Train (which all its is shiny conductors have jumped off the train, i just keeps rolling through burgs like EdSurge).

In some ways, the strongest indictment of the MOOC hype.

That sure is one way to put it. Same expectation for #NGDLE?

Sounds like MOOCs have been part of his role, at least in UT’s collaboration with edX. Which brings an interesting context to the piece, especially in view of what we might call “the end of the MOOC moment”.

This puts MOOC hype in perspective, including the Matthew Effect.

Cue Rolin Moe, who has investigated the MOOC hype so thoroughly. We may still follow a Gartner Cycle (Merton did warn us about self-fulfilling prophesies). But much of those phases have been documented.

Timely. Sent it to a few people, already, as it connects with several discussions we’ve been having on neocolonialism in EdTech, including the content side of Open Education (OER). Some of it reminds me of Crissinger’s critical take on OER, based on her experience with Open Access.

We often think of the hype cycle but two things this post reveals about MOOC hype: 1) There can be regional differences in the timing of those cycles. 2) We might be in a broad shift from MOOC as a thing to MOOC as a pretext for openness.

My thoughts exactly. Same was true of McG’s Tony Massi saying that MOOCs got a few science teachers to rethink their teaching for the first time in decades.