Professors in the philosophy department at San Jose State University wrote the following letter to make a direct appeal to Michael Sandel, a Harvard professor whose MOOC on “Justice” they were being encouraged to use as part of the San Jose State curriculum. (See a related article and a response from Mr. Sandel.)
San Jose State University recently announced a contract with edX (a company
associated with MIT and Harvard) to expand the use of online blended courses.
The SJSU Philosophy Department was asked to pilot your JusticeX course, and we
refused. We decided to express to you our reasons for refusing to be involved with this course, and, because we believe that other departments and universities will sooner or later face the same predicament, we have decided to share our reasons with you publicly.
There is no pedagogical problem in our department that JusticeX solves, nor do we have a shortage of faculty capable of teaching our equivalent course.
We believe that long-term financial considerations motivate the call for massively open online courses (MOOCs) at public universities such as ours. Unfortunately, the move to MOOCs comes at great peril to our university. We regard such courses as a serious compromise of quality of education and, ironically for a social justice course, a case of social injustice.