Irving Wladawsky-Berger

MOOCs: Inflated Expectations, Early Disappointments

Massive open online courses (MOOCs), - online platforms offering courses and educational materials to very large numbers of people, - captured our imagination in the Fall of 2011 when, unexpectedly, a free online course in artificial intelligence given by two Stanford professors attracted 160,000 students.  The NY Times called 2012 The Year of the MOOC.  Three major MOOC platforms were launched that year, the for-profit, VC-backed Udacity and Coursera, which were each started by Stanford faculty members; and the not-for-profit edX, a collaborative venture of MIT and Harvard.  They established partnerships with a number of universities which offer their own online courses on the platforms.  Other institutions around the world have also launched their own MOOCs.

Looking at all this activity, an October, 2012 Time cover story asked an important question: “Can a new breed of online megacourses finally offer a college education to more people for less money?”  MOOCs seemed to be the answer.  A higher education, whether from four-year colleges or vocational schools, is more important than ever for most well-paying jobs.  Yet, the costs of obtaining such an education have been rapidly rising in the US and other advanced economies, and are beyond the reach of most young people in emerging economies. 

But, as is generally the case with major disruptive innovations, realizing the promise takes hard work, considerable experimentation and quite a bit longer than originally expected.  Several months ago we started seeing articles with titles like Are We Mooc’d Out?, which asked if along with being The Year of the MOOC, 2012 may also be the year when MOOCs reached the zenith of the hype cycle that emerging technologies inevitable go through.  Having achieved the peak of inflated expectations, MOOCS seemed to now be falling into the trough of disillusionment.

Are Smart Cities Empty Hype?

A couple of weeks ago I participated in an online debate sponsored by The Economist.  The debate was built around the question: Are Smart Cities Empty Hype?  Defending the motion was Anthony Townsend, Research Director at the Institute for the Future and adjunct faculty member at NYU’s Wagner School of Public Service.  I took the opposite side, arguing the case against the motion. 

The debate consisted of three phases spread out over roughly ten days.  We each first stated our respective positions in our opening statements, followed a few days later by our rebuttals, and then finally our closing statements.  It was moderated by Ludwig Siegele, online business and finance editor at The Economist, who offered his own remarks in each phase of the debate.  Throughout the process, people were invited to vote on the motion, as well as to post their own comments. 

The debate was inspired, I believe, by The Multiplexed Metropolis, an article Siegele published in the September 7 issue of The Economist which explored the impact of big data on cities.  He wrote that the vast amounts of data generated by the many social interactions taking place in cities might lead to a kind of second electrification, transforming 21st century cities much as electricity did in the past.  “Enthusiasts think that data services can change cities in this century as much as electricity did in the last one,” he noted.  “They are a long way from proving their case.” 

In my opening statement, I said that I strongly believe that digital technologies and the many data services they are enabling will make cities smarter and help transform them over time.  My position is not surprising, given my affiliations with NYU's Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP) and Imperial College’s Digital City Exchange, as well as my past involvements with IBM’s Smarter Cities and with Citigroup’s Citi for Cities initiatives.  But, I totally understand why so many, - almost half of those voting and quite a few who left comments, - feel that smart cities are mostly hype.  The case for smart cities is indeed far from proven.

The Puzzling Technology Adoption Discrepancy Between Individuals and Institutions

Since the publication of its first report in 2009, I’ve closely followed the Shift Index initiative of Deloitte’s Center for the Edge.  The initiative, co-led by John Hagel and John Seely Brown, is an attempt to quantify what Deloitte calls The Big Shift, the long term transformations in the global business environment over the past several decades, brought about by the rapid advances in digital technologies as well as major changes in public policy. 

One of their major findings is that the return on assets (ROA) of US companies have been steadily dropping, and are now 75 percent lower than their 1965 levels.  ROA is a general indicator of the profitability of a company, so this means that something profound has happened in business to cause the ROA of US companies to drop to a quarter of their 1965 levels.  This ROA decline is expected to continue into the foreseeable future. 

The Shift Index is composed of 25 metrics grouped into three major indices that render explicit some of the major drivers behind this historical transformations.  The Foundation index, measures the fast moving advances in technology performance and adoption, as well as the shifts of global public policy that are reducing the barriers to entry and movement.  The Flow index measures the flows of capital, talent and knowledge across institutional and geographic boundaries that, enabled by an increasingly powerful digital infrastructure, are transforming the business landscape.  And, the Impact index aims to quantify the impact of these changes on companies and individuals, as well as on competition, volatility and business performance.

The Gulf Between Planning and Reality

It’s way too early to know what really happened with the botched launch of Healthcare.Gov.  We don’t know how it will all play in years to come and what its impact will be on the evolution of the Alternative Care Act (ACA), on election results over the next few years, or on President Obama’s legacy.  Depending on how it all turns out over time, this will be just a chapter in future books on the history of the ACA and the Obama administration, or the subject of major books and investigative reports.   

Most everyone who’s been involved with the development of complex IT systems knows how wrong things can sometimes go.  So, when serious problems do happen, we are eager to learn the lessons that might help us avoid similar problems in the future.  It’s quite possible that Healthcare.gov and the ACA’s overall IT system are such complex outliers, - technically, organizationally and politically, - that any lessons learned might apply to few other projects.  But, given the increasing complexity of private and public sector IT systems, the lessons are worth thinking about.

I like the way Clay Shirky, - NYU faculty member as well as author and consultant, - framed the problem in a very interesting blog, - Healthcare.gov and the Gulf Between Planning and Reality.  He writes about the gulf between those charged with planning the overall rollout of the ACA and health care exchanges and the realities of trying to get such a complex system designed, built and launched in a short amount of time.  It’s essentially a tale of failure is not an option versus the messy world of highly complex IT systems.  While the blog is focused on the launch of Healthcare.gov, it can also be read as a more general discussion of the kinds of problems often encountered with highly, complex IT-based projects when a management decision to win a deal at all costs comes back to haunt the implementation of the project.

Some Thoughts on the Affordable Care Act

My friend and former IBM colleague John Patrick posted a very good entry in his blog on the Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka Obamacare.  As we all know, the ACA has had a rough start.  In his entry, John asks two basic questions: do we need the ACA?; and, should it be repealed?

John has always been a pioneer in embracing new technologies.  He understood the power of the Internet very early on and worked tirelessly to get IBM involved.  Together, we organized IBM’s Internet Division in the mid-1990s and continued to work closely until his retirement from IBM in 2001.  He was one of the first people I knew who had a blog, - which is still going strong after all these years, - and was a big influence in my decision to start my own blog in May of 2005. 

Do we need the ACA or something like it?  John points out that “The United States is the only developed country in the world that does not have universal healthcare, meaning that all citizens have healthcare insurance.”  Different countries have developed universal health care along different models.  The UK has a single payer system.  Germany’s is based on over 200 payers.  Canada’s is operated by its 13 provinces.