MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) do more good than harm.

My opponent has explained his or her point well. However, I still disagree greatly. Before diving into the bigger topic being debating I would like to clarify what the dropout percentage is for MOOCs in the opening argument my opponent stated that it is 13 percent however in the ladder argument it was stated to be 10 percent. Now to discuss the points my opponent has made. One main point my opponent seems to be emphasizing is the dropout rate of MOOCs, comparing it to the dropout rate of high school. There is a flaw with this comparison however. Not all high school students have the choice of dropping out, where as one is not forced to participate in a MOOCs. It comes back to the point of the responsibility of the students. I'm willing to bet if there were no restrictions or complications involved in dropping out of normal high school the drop out rate would be significantly higher. Of course one would expect the dropout rate to be higher when dropping out is a much easier option. Another claim made by my opponent is that "MOOCs do not offer great education and offer necessarily quality information" This is a very bold claim. I find it hard for anyone, even my opponent, to believe that the majority of MOOCs do not offer quality education. However, it was not suggested that some or even most don't, my opponent went as far as to claim that MOOCs simply don't implying all educations provided by MOOCs are lacking. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is by most accredited with being a fine educational establishment. MIT also offers an expansive list of MOOCs. It is very difficult to argue that such an institution with its resources would spend time and money producing poor educational material. My opponent also stated "Watch a video and answer questions? Isn't that what a MOOC is? I don't see much learning involved in that. " I beg to argue that the majority of people could notice this process as learning. Is that not what learning is, watching, reading, or being taught material and then being able to answer questions that one previously couldn't. In fact the definition of what it is to learn according to Merriam-Webster is "to gain knowledge or skill by studying, practicing, being taught, or experiencing something" I would argue that watching a video and answering question is clearly learning merely by definition. Also I'm pretty sure my opponent misunderstood my analogy of the blind person being given limited vision. "Your example with somebody helping the blind person is totally irrelevant to this topic for the reason that I have stated--there is little to no student-teacher interaction in a MOOC." I would argue that the analogy is quite relevant as it can easily represent the subject at hand. I never said that this person was working one on one with you to help you see. They could be offering it free over the internet just as with MOOCs with no interaction between the actual inventor and the blind person it would still have the same effect. There are a few more points of my opponent that I would like to discuss. My opponent said that with such a high dropout rate there must be "a lot of people in this world who are lazy" I think it is pretty widely agreed upon that there are in fact a lot of lazy people in this world. So yes with there being many lazy people in this world, I consider it wrong to place all the blame on the program offering knowledge. My opponent claims that MOOCs are " not necessarily that much work" even though he or she claimed in the opening argument that they present the student with a challenge I would like to argue that these two statements greatly contradict each other. My opponent used the example of driving to school, parking your car, and walking through hallways as proof that MOOCs do not require much work. Work, however, is not limited to the physical actions of driving and walking but also includes mental requirements and work outside of merely going to class. As previously stated, I believe MOOCs require more work because of the fact that more of the responsibility is being placed on the students shoulders. Just after saying MOOCs required little work my opponent stated that "Anybody can do it" when obviously according to my opponent himself and the higher dropout rates everybody can not do it. My opponent then went on to claim that the willpower of the students is to blame because little to no effort is required physically. I think there is a problem with this claim merely based off of the fact that willpower is mental not physical. My opponent also brought up a new argument as to why MOOCs are harmful. "MOOCs have and will do more harm than good because, if they become the new thing to do, they may completely replace schools." I would like to argue that this is incorrect. If my opponent believes in his or her own argument that traditional educational methods are better then MOOCs then he must believe that MOOCs will not become the "new thing to do" and they will never "completely replace schools" because a large number of people will still want traditional education. Even if MOOCs do become popular I beg to argue that they will never completely replace schools for the above reason and that the chance of this happening is little to none. This is shaping up to be quite an interesting debate, there is one small thing I ask of my opponent and that is-- if you are going to cite sources can you please provide a link instead of merely the name of the website so that I can evaluate the source myself and confirm it is trustworthy. Other than that great debate so far and good luck.