To some people in higher education, "MOOC" has become a punch line. The initial hype around so-called massive open online courses was so intense — promising a "tsunami" of change, according to one New York Times columnist, and a shuttering of most traditional colleges, according to one of the trend’s pioneers — that the reality was doomed to fall short. "In some ways MOOCs have become the love child of a relationship that we regret," says George Siemens, an academic-technology expert at the University of Texas at Arlington who coined the term while teaching an experimental online course seven years ago. "You don’t even say it without someone rolling their eyes."