I see MOOCs as more the kind of Uncle that never shuts up about how great they are and how much better the world would be if they ran it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMIlCn5-mms

Any chance of a narrated version of this? Martin. This is a great resource and a useful set of reflections to share with others.

Nicely done Martin. This narrative thing is something I've been banging on about for a while now. :-) We are in some danger of losing control of the "making education more betterer" story. We need to get better at telling our story, and at pointing out the flaws in theirs. And we need to avoid getting caught up in the panic and destruction that is the first act of their story.

@UniversityBoy's second para nails it. What we are seeing here is not a reaction against MOOCs per se, more a reaction to the worst excesses of MOOC hype. Like most things in our world, MOOCs are a good idea in some situations for some people. During the inevitable backlash, we need to protect some of the truly innovative work (Phonar/PICBOD, Edinburgh's Coursera stuff, FSLT... to give some UK examples that are combining the scale of the xMOOC with the humanity of the cMOOC) from being tarred with the same brush.

You think "open" has won, Martin? Open is just a fashionable marketing term. A Coursera MOOC is just free at the point of use, there's nothing "open" about it at all. Gold OA is just another way for publishers to get money from universities for doing bugger all. Gartner was right, we've got a lot more work to do. The really big stuff (http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/cor-baby-thats-really-free/)

I kind of imagine Brian like this now... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xpc0s9FsA1Q

I guess the competition aspect of MOOCs is all about the "size" thing isn't it? So it's based on the false assumptions that there is a discrete and limited market for Open Education MOOCs, and that it is not possible for more than one to exist. Chaps, MOOC starts with an "O". Not an "M". :-)

Yes indeed. JISC and CETIS predicted the free content & peer support, pay for academic support, assessment, accreditation idea back at ALT2010 (http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/oer-futures-and-universality-inc-altc2010). There's really only the point at which you pay differing stuff like that from early 00s online learning. Dave Cormier has an interesting angle on this too: http://davecormier.com/edblog/2012/06/24/a-dead-head-sticker-on-a-cadillac-the-new-open-learning/ I like your bridge design point, really useful metaphor. :-)

"and 10 years from now people will be writing papers that cite Stanford as the initiator of open courses." I was interviewed recently by a journalist who claimed just that.

Do you have any unusual cake recipes you can share?

I no longer believe in the Gartner Hype Cycle. Stuff either works (in that it does something that I find useful or entertaining at that particular moment in time, or lets me be useful/entertaining to others) or doesn't. In fact, the Gartner Hype Cycle backlash starts here :-D

Great post Martin. Sometimes the story doesn't break until well after the spin is over - wikileaks has proved this, and we'll see it again with fees and the new funding model.

What about "middle OER" - individually led and managed but with the explicit support of an institution or other academic body? The original UKOER thesis was to support institutions in changing their processes and policies to "allow" the release of OER...