Most of my development work in recent years has been on learning management systems (LMS). I've built lots of different types of LMS's for different types of sc

Most of my development work in recent years has been on learning management systems (LMS). I've built lots of different types of LMS's for different types of schools and students. When the MOOC "bubble" started, I was sort of stunned that so many schools thought that they could deliver a valid learning experience by just posting videos and syllabi online. Everyone's been doing that since 1995. MOOC was just a way to say "lots of people are watching our videos in the same sequence!" The model started breaking down quickly as soon as tracking objectives, assessing students, and interacting with instructors came into play. That's when you're into LMS territory. LMS seems to be a bad word when you talk to MOOC advocates. Like so many buzzword people, they say that MOOC's are "disrupting" the traditional LMS. But at the end of the day, if you're going to be successful with a MOOC, you're going to have what amounts to an LMS to deliver it. There's no magic bullet shortcut there that combines ("mashup"- another favorite buzzword for people reinventing the wheel) all the things you need to deliver a successful learning experience. MOOC people say they're disrupting learning systems by mashing up all these things. It's a great idea- but once you actually implement, you've built an LMS. My current client's LMS could easily, today, deliver a class to 100K students with manageable interactivity and assignments (and delivery on mobile devices), and yet the client wants to throw the thing away because it's 10 years old. Most universities who have failed with MOOC's would spend a million bucks or more to have this LMS, and the client is just going to throw it away. Wasting money seems to be the true meaning of "disrupt" in the learning context.