Some call it an instance of the Red Queen effect, right out of Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass. Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, promise free education from Harvard and other elite colleges, but only if you have broadband access to watch those free lecture videos. Many lack such access, and ISPs are talking about phasing out all-you-can-surf data plans, so that it will be even more costly to watch large amounts of online video. As the Red Queen tells Alice: "It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" Keeping up with digital technology is like that race—it takes a continual investment of money and time just to keep up with the latest, and an exceptional amount of work to get ahead of the pack. Colleges considering MOOCs should remember that.
'Bandwidth Divide' Could Limit Reach of MOOCs | Heykuki News