 It's about connections. Anyone can participate, learning, working, collaborating, locally, globally, universally. MOOCs are a game changer for higher education. The large-scale availability, the low cost to students, the questions raised around credentialing, and the analytics MOOCs provide all create a momentum to new pathways for education. MOOCs may not be the end game, but they've certainly gotten a lot of us in the game. The MOOC is just an indicator of how important it is for people to connect with each other as part of their learning experience. And what I hope it's doing also is validating informal learning and changing what we think lifelong learning is about. If we think about the internet, web 2.0, content sharing, blog, what have all those innovations have done? They've brought people together. I think the common theme behind MOOCs is really connectedness. And what we think we're seeing is that we're in the connected age, not the information age. It's not just about getting information. It's about how you connect the dots, how you connect people, how you connect different types of information. When you look at MOOCs, it's something which assumes the web for a start. They're predicated on that kind of organic networked sociability. They assume huge scale. And that's their strength. We have to remember that most of the people who take MOOCs are not enrolled college students. Sometimes it's for work. A lot of people are taking MOOCs for personal enrichment. I think one of the great possibilities for connected learning in MOOCs is to connect the workplace, higher education, and lifelong learning. What if universities start creating perpetual degrees? So you come to Penn State. You get a bachelor's degree. But then every few years, you get kind of a refresher MOOC that you're invited into that says, here's the new things in your field. And then you're kept up to date as kind of an ongoing professional development. MOOCs are doing more than providing an opportunity to learn. They're bringing attention to the cost of higher education by upending the notion of the traditional university registration. MOOCs are helping presidents and provosts pay attention and understand the shift in connectivity and delivering online education to consumers through information technology. They are creating new business models for higher education. And they are providing information about how we learn through the use of analytics. Another important point about the connected age is analytics. When things are connected, when they're digital, you can collect information. And if you are collecting data, because things are connected, you can develop dashboards that tell instructors where their students are with the granularity we've not had before. Beyond the hype of MOOCs is a peek into the connected age. In the connected age, IT is not just a delivery channel. It's a way to change the learning experience and an enabler of new lifelong learning models. If you think about the connected age, it's really about creating pathways, not just isolated experiences or courses or gateways that let people in or keep people out. It's about creating a pathway to lifelong learning.