Can MOOCs and blended learning serve to shrink the achievement gap?

Can MOOCs and blended learning serve to shrink the achievement gap in American education?  This is a question I began to ask myself while listening to a podcast from Econ Talk from the Library of Economics and Liberty.  This is one of my favorite podcasts and one I listen to weekly.  This podcast featured Dr. Daphne Koller, Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University and one of the founders of Coursera along with Andrew Ng.  Click here for a link to the Econ Talk website or here for a link to the podcast via iTunes.

I am optimistic regarding the potential benefits of MOOCs and of blended learning.  I believe these modes of education do offer potential benefits that could assist us in shrinking the achievement gap in our country.  Daphne Koller argues that “MOOCs can be a significant factor in opening doors to opportunity” and I agree with her wholeheartedly.  MOOCs possess the power to reach the most marginalized student and to serve as a leveling mechanism in education.  I believe we will see more and more education providers begin to take advantage of the potential benefits of this mode of education as we move forward.  In addition, I believe blended learning may be utilized to overcome many of the challenges we encounter in urban education.  For example, increasingly we hear a great deal about the the flipped classroom and  how it assist in the completion of homework, maximizes class time, and how it is being used to increase academic outcomes.  Here is a link to a pdf file that discusses the basics of a flipped classroom in case you are interested.