The Death of the Large Lecture Hall, the Rise of Peer-to-Peer Course Delivery?

This article reports the results of a pilot project conducted at the University of California-Irvine (UCI) involving the simultaneous online delivery of a course to both University of California undergraduates and enrollees on the Coursera Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platform. Survey results from a robust sampling of UCI undergraduates offer strong disruptive-technology evidence that a new generation of students weaned on the Internet and social media may find well-delivered online courses to be an acceptable substitute for-or even preferable to-large lecture hall courses. The results also indicate a very strong student response to a peer-to-peer approach in which course content is delivered in a video lecture format by a fellow undergraduate (under instructor supervision). A strong positive response to the MOOC platforms offers the promise of economies of course delivery for colleges and universities seeking to implement cybereducation cost-effectively.