Amid all that enthusiasm for MOOCs these days, it’s important to remember the educational importance of interaction between individual professors and students-and not just for students at elite universities.

In “Teaching “By Hand” in a Digital Age,” Joseph Harris draws on his own experience to explore the important “difference [for students] between being presented with a model or heuristic and working under the guidance of a teacher.”

As “scalability” increasingly becomes the litmus test for innovation in higher education, it’s worth thinking about what aspects of a quality education may be lost in the rush-and for whom.