The New Yorker just ran a piece entitled, How Harvard’s Star Computer-Science Professor Built a Distance-Learning Empire, (Orbey, 2020) on David Malan, a dynamic lecturer from Harvard who's been putting his pre-recorded content online and creating social learning communities since before Coursera's inception in 2012! His lectures are the types of content that curators should seek out when developing courses based on MOOCs. Not only does he employ theatrics and props throughout his lectures, but also has high-quality production tools.

enrollment had exceeded eight hundred students, and many of them had to watch from the balcony. Sanders is one of the university’s largest performance venues, a booming, stadium-style hall of burnished red oak. Malan’s team equipped it with five cameras—some manned by humans, others robotically controlled—and, at the back of the mezzanine, a makeshift production booth. As in a “live sporting event,” Malan explained, the students who watch CS50 in real-time might see the camera cut to a closeup of him, or to a gigantic projection of his computer screen, or to a wide shot from the robotic slider, which captures the silhouettes of spectators in the front of the house. Whereas many online instructors chop up their lectures into short segments, interspersed with exercises designed to monitor progress and sustain engagement, Malan publishes his uninterrupted. He often teaches in front of a green screen, so that his team can turn his Web browser into a giant backdrop in post-production. ( Orbey, 2020, Par. 8)

Here are two samples of his lectures:

If this was not enough the course has spurned a collection of social learning groups around the globe to imitate the content and solve problems together.

CS50 has inspired satellite operations on every continent except Antarctica. Though most of the students who sign up for the edX version—more than two million to date—quit before finishing, those who stick with it often become diehards: earlier this year, in Baghdad, students restaged Malan’s project fair at al-Hikma University with identical trimmings, down to the emoji-shaped balloons and the custom “debugging” rubber ducks. To promote the expansion of CS50, Malan films welcome teasers for the remote cohorts, hosts annual educator workshops, and helps prop up outposts around the world. (Orbey, 2020, par. 4)

Unfortunately, if this type of production were to scale for learners around the globe it would be as costly as a major motion picture.

Malan, who often employs up to a hundred teaching assistants, estimated that the “human side” of the cost alone amounts to at least two hundred thousand dollars a semester. For many of CS50’s extracurricular social events, he defrays expenses by asking tech companies to serve as sponsors. (Orbey, 2020, par. 23)

While this type of lecture is fascinating, it really doesn't scale. Or, if lectures became major motion pictures, the role of studios as gatekeepers would be exceptionally important and they would have the ability to decide which type of content gets disseminated and by whom. Malan seems to have this particular computer science course wrangled, but what about other courses? Will new superstars emerge? Will they even be educators or Hollywood showmen and women reading from a script? What utility would this 'lectures' have in a classroom of the future?

References

Orbey, E. (n.d.). How harvard’s star computer-science professor built a distance-learning empire. The New Yorker. Retrieved July 22, 2020, from https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-local-correspondents/how-harvards-star-computer-science-professor-built-a-distance-learning-empire