Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) holds a promise to expand educational reach to those with limited resources to pursue education in colleges and universities. Research has suggested some concerns for this education tool as the completion rates are low and those who access them already have substantial learning experience and prior education. Professor Jennifer M. Morton of City University of New York provides a perspective on how MOOCs can possibly influence and alter the dynamics of the current socio-economic class structure that traditional college education entails. According to her, college education is considered to be the first place where students with low-income families have to consistently engage with middle-class students and professors and navigate middle-class social norms. Moreover, in addition to cognitive skills like mathematical, scientific and historical knowledge, college education also imparts practical skills like social, emotional and behavioral competencies. But full adoption of MOOCs by large public universities can potentially harm the prospects of the students for whom college education is essential to elevate their status into middle-class. Online education may not provide them social and practical skills that are considered a necessity in highly competitive workplace environment. Tenacious, confident and socially competent employees have an edge over equally cognitively talented employees who lack practical skills. Professor Morton suggests that with extensive adoption of MOOCs by institutions that provide an environment to disadvantaged students to break the barrier of poverty and deprivation, the socio-economic segregation of the US educational system will further expand to the postsecondry level and widen the gap between haves and have-nots. When these students that lack social skills apply for employment with degrees they will more likely be considered lacking competencies by their prospective employers and unfit to effectively contribute to their organizations. Read on...

The Chronicle of Higher Education: Unequal Classrooms - What Online Education Cannot Teach

http://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2013/07/29/unequal-classrooms-what-online-education-cannot-teach/

In today's world there are diverse technologies that make social collaboration happen both at personal and professional level. These technologies provide workers ability to interact, participate and collaborate anytime and anywhere more efficiently without the need for their physical presence. Over the years this process of social collaboration has been consistently improving due to advancements in communication technologies. Autodesk has developed an infographic depicting and explaining the evolution of social collaboration. The main stages of this development include - Ray Dolby, Charles Ginsburg and Charles Anderson invented the first video camera with both image and sound recording (1956); Samuel Morse created Morse Code (1836); Alexander Graham Bell created telephone (1876); ENIAC was invented as the first all purpose computer (1946); Computer-aided design created for Watergate structure (1962); Xerox photocopying machine developed (1959); Doug Engelbart and Bill English invent computer mouse (1960); PLATO computer system developed at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign had started providing innovative communication tools like email, chatrooms, instant messaging, remote screen sharing, emoticons (1976); First network email sent by Ray Tomlinson on ARPANET (1971); First mobile phone call made by Martin Cooper on Motorola DynaTAC prototype (1973); PARC's Knowledge System Area created CoLab with workstations for group meetings and to collaborate on projects (late 1980s); Internet TCP/IP by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn (1982); First commercial mobile phone DynaTAC 8000x (1983); Mac Portable by Apple (1989); Microsoft Outlook 97 as a communication hub with email, scheduling, contact management, task management etc (1997); World Wide Web made available that was developed by Robert Cailliau and Tim Berners-Lee (1991); WWW made free to anyone by CERN (1993); AOL connects email system to Internet and allowed users to chat and IM in real time (1997); GoToMeeting is launched for online meeting, desktop sharing and video conferencing (2004); Growth of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest etc (2010s); 2.5 billion people are using Internet worldwide (2012). Read on...

Online Social Media: Evolution of social collaboration from 1950 to present

http://www.onlinesocialmedia.net/20140423/evolution-of-social-collaboration-from-1950-to-present/