E-learn Weblog of Willem van Valkenburg

In January I already wrote about the predictability of hype cycles. Now Arthur Josephson has written an interesting item on this:

It seems clear that we are on the way to the “Peak of Inflated Expectations”, but how far up the mountain does David Sterns’ “5 to 10 percent of the way” get us?
There are two major challenges with this framing. First, Gartner’s model may have useful “explanatory” power- i.e. it works well in hindsight- but a host of missed predictions demonstrate the lack of anything more than a vague “predictive” capacity. A striking failing is the complete omission of MOOCs from the Gartner’s 2012 graph (right). This absence, despite the report being drafted in July last year, well after “the technological trigger” had been well established and pioneers embedded.
The second challenge is that it is easy to conflate the hype cycle with an investment cycle. It may be a dangerous to assume that MOOCs will be driven by similar forces because no MOOCs has yet come close to demonstrating an effective business model, even in any rigorous theoretical way.

I personally think that a hype cycle doesn't work for such a global development as MOOCs. I see big difference between the US and some other parts of the globe. Some countries are just discovering MOOCs other already a national policy. Due to these differences and the global access to that information, you see that universities that are just starting with MOOCs can skip use the first experiences that other institutions have had and can further improve the concept.

If you would like to use a curve, I would go for Roger's S curves, as descripted in his 1962 book Diffusion of Innovations. This meeans that MOOCs will eventually reach a kind of saturation, and there will come a new technology of service that will continue and will further change education.