It matters a great deal, actually, because one can't ask a textbook a question that it didn't anticipate and get an answer from it that reflects all of the knowledge, expertise, and experience of the presumably erudite author.
You can ask those things of living humans in a teaching/learning environment, however, and get answers. Whether they are good answers or not is not the point (yes, it's important that they be good but not for this particular reason).
Ergo, creative problem-solving, being more than rehashing what you've seen/encountered previously, requires a more thoughtful educational process in order to truly educate.
The other reason why this is important is that the diversity of thought that a master in any field is exposed to when teaching... is truly FUEL for innovation and lifelong learning and exploration for the instructor, too. Even people at Caltech and MIT are learning about new ways to see things when students ASK QUESTIONS.
Ergo, creative problem-solving, being more than rehashing what you've seen/encountered previously, requires a more thoughtful educational process in order to truly educate.
If it were all just about ability to read and absorb it from a book, then nobody would still be TEACHING mathematics or classical mechanics in the first place.
There is also a huge difference between regurgitation and understanding sufficiently to tackle novel problems set before one. Eidectic memory is not mastery. Knowing the PROCESS of working a particular infinite-potential well problem is one thing, but the problem is understanding it well enough to model novelty-- and to recognize when the model is valid, when it isn't, and when it MIGHT be and might not be.
I realize that it seems like science is all right/wrong and very binary, but that is not the case. Textbooks, video clips and canned instructional modules do not capture "yeah, but... what if... what about... what happens if..." questions, and good, engaged students ask those things as they explore.
I think that the push toward MOOC has asked fundamentally wrong questions. It has assumed that the process of learning is inherently autodidactic, and is about absorbing a body of facts and being able to generate "the" answer to questions that one person (or a group of them) has decided are "important" about that body of knowledge.
It has then asked "are there things that cannot be done using this tool?"
Instead, I'd argue (and have, I realize) that the better question is to look at the tool and say "it teaches bodies of information and facts very well. Which fields of study can this be used in?"
There are ways to use this idea in a flipped classroom. But assuming that it can REPLACE classrooms (or interactive learning environments) is simply wrong.
Books didn't manage that, by and large, and neither can MOOC's. The danger is in thinking that they can, because there is a more nuanced difference here-- competence versus mastery.
