Can MOOCs Motivate Personal Change?

It is fair to say that MOOCs have captured the world’s imagination as to what might be possible for education, both now and in the future.

MOOCs have also generated controversy, with some wondering about their implications for residential education and others asserting that their hype exceeds their grasp.I would like in this blog post to address a slightly different question, which is what sort of learning can occur through MOOCs and other online offerings? We know that online learning works for knowledge and skills. But can MOOCs change the way people behave?

That was one of the questions that motivated the launch of the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s first-ever HarvardX MOOC. Entitled GSE1x Unlocking the Immunity to Change: A New Approach to Personal Improvement, the course was developed by Bob Kegan and Lisa Lahey, two of my faculty colleagues from the Harvard Graduate School of Education who are developmental psychologists and experts in adult development.