As I consider the principle of openness in relation to MOOCs it has occurred to me that xMOOCs, the current version of MOOCs that are relied upon by corporate providers are at some point going to be irrelevant and maybe the pandemic will make quicken that transition towards irrelevancy. Creative destruction, the concept of innovation replacing outdated processes in a predictable economic cycle was used often in relation to Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in the 2010’s. MOOCs were thought to be such a major disruptor to post secondary education that post secondary institutions would merge into fewer providers. Sebastien Thrun, founder of Udacity infamously said “In 50 years, there will be only 10 institutions in the world delivering higher education and Udacity has a shot at being one of them” (Watters, A. October 2013). We are now a decade in and in Canada, according to the 2019 Higher Education Strategy Associates Report, The State of PostSecondary Education in Canada (2019) we have seen registration in post secondary education increase, mainly driven by international student registrations. MOOCs were not the great disruption to higher education institutions they were proclaimed to be. As MOOCs are a business they are also subject to the inevitable cycle of creative destruction. I am curious if the pandemic has pushed the current rendition of MOOCs, the xMOOC down the road towards its demise?
According to Impey and Formanek (2021), the pandemic conditions created an uptake in MOOC registrations in 2020. The course my group took part in, the Science of Well Being had a 3000% rise in registrants from the previous year (Hooper, 2022). xMOOCs which are characterized as traditional lecture style videos with some self assessments and the ability to pay for a certification upon completion are aligned with autonomous, behaviourist learning methodology. With an upswing in online learners overall during the pandemic I am curious about how this might contribute to speeding along the demise of the xMOOC, pushing it to the edges as a higher education option. There are a few reasons I think this could be true. Firstly, we will now likely have a bigger audience for online education that is more savvy about what online education can be, rather than settle for what it is based on student experience in pandemic learning environments.They are likely to be more discerning about their education choices particularly in online learning.
Secondly, innovation in online education is likely to rise post-pandemic with educators who were thrust into teaching and learning in online spaces now having some experience in digital learning environments. Some of these educators will likely find inspiration to continue to innovate in shared online spaces to improve the learning experience for their students.
Thirdly, I think both of these conditions will likely create more openness and more connection in online learning spaces which is simply not compatible with the xMOOC business model.From the pandemic I imagine a more discerning learner population, a more innovative educator population and a shift towards openness and connection with one another in online learning spaces. The xMOOC will need to adapt to these new demands to stay relevant.
References:
Hooper, B. (2022). Yale class on boosting happiness surges in popularity amid COVID-19. United Press International.
https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2022/01/11/Yale-University-happiness-class-surges-amid-COVID-19-pandemic/3511641937253/
Impey, C. & Formanek, M. (2021) MOOCs and 100 Days of Covid: Enrollment surges in massive open online astronomy classes during the coronavirus pandemic.Social Sciences and the Humanities Open.4(1)
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssaho.2021.100177.
Usher, A., (2019). The State of Postsecondary Education in Canada, 2019. Toronto: Higher Education Strategy Associates.
http://higheredstrategy.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/HESA-Spec-2019-Final_v2.pdf
Watters, A. (October 15, 2013). A Future With Only 10 Universities. Hack Education.
http://hackeducation.com/2013/10/15/minding-the-future-openva
May 12, 2022 at 12:49 pm
Hi Karen, great ideas about how the xMOOC will need to step up their game in the post-pandemic learning space! I think we can also consider various factors and events that contributed to the context in which MOOCs saw a spike in their registrations during the pandemic. Here are few things that came to mind: how were post-secondary institutions handling the initial stage of the pandemic lockdown? How confident did students feel about committing to degree studies at the time? What were the students’ reasons for pursuing MOOCs? Were they unemployed and needed to enroll in a course during the gap, or received education benefits from their employer that they wanted to take advantage of? Perhaps a deep dive into some of the factors that boosted MOOC registrations will help inform education providers on learner aspects that they can capitalize on to drive enrollment.
May 12, 2022 at 12:49 pm
Hi Karen, great ideas about how the xMOOC will need to step up their game in the post-pandemic learning space! I think we can also consider various factors and events that contributed to the context in which MOOCs saw a spike in their registrations during the pandemic. Here are few things that came to mind: how were post-secondary institutions handling the initial stage of the pandemic lockdown? How confident did students feel about committing to degree studies at the time? What were the students’ reasons for pursuing MOOCs? Were they unemployed and needed to enroll in a course during the gap, or received education benefits from their employer that they wanted to take advantage of? Perhaps a deep dive into some of the factors that boosted MOOC registrations will help inform education providers on learner aspects that they can capitalize on to drive enrollment.
May 17, 2022 at 8:27 am
Hi Karen,
Great post. Indeed, the future rarely goes to plan.
I was interested to learn that there is such a thing as a cMOOC, using connectivism. But I am curious why, in the general academic discourse, MOOCs and eLearnings for that matter, are negatively associated with behaviourism.
What do you think a constructivist or cognitivist MOOC would look like?
Thank you
Ben
May 18, 2022 at 1:25 pm
Hi Ben, in regards to your question about behaviourism I think it has negative connotations for a few reasons. Most of my thinking about this comes from Audrey Watters and her book Teaching Machines (2021). Behaviourism was brought into play by Skinner in an early example of a self proclaimed disruptor of education using technology to automate learning. Skinner pronounced that his learning machines would disrupt and change the education landscape, improved forever. We have now seen different renditions of education aligned with for profit motives making the same proclamations ever since, including with MOOCs in the early 2010s. Skinner believed in his behaviourism pedagogy as the solution to all the problems of education he went so far as to build a crib for a baby to grow up in that would provide all of the child’s needs in an automated fashion believing this would result in a well developed and educated child.
Behaviourism is really about memorizing without considering, responding without rationale. We are given information and act on it and if we receive negative feedback we will then at some point change our response so that we receive positive feedback. At its most extreme it’s just about seeking memorized automated responses. Students learn what the response should be to get the positive feedback but not how or why and not how to grow their knowledge about the subject matter. This is true for the xMOOC I am in where I am coding Swift. I follow the video, if I do it correctly the code works. For me, I know if that was the only thing I did to propel my learning I would not be able to expand my knowledge or work with it in any innovative way in the future so I seek other ways to connect with the subject.
In regards to your constructivist MOOC question and what that might look like I attempted to describe this in my response to Alisha in my earlier post but they used to look like a MOOC with blogging, connecting on social media and with a facilitator at the centre of the learning. Now I think it’s more de-centralized, learner driven and makes use of the networks available to create learning but may not have the Massive piece of the definition any longer. For my Swift coding I am in the xMOOC registered through Coursera, but am also on Github communities and now Twitter and have connected with AR developers in both spaces, I am on Youtube looking at how other developers are working with Swift and I have reached out to other academics to ask them about the future of AR, I also attended a session in the latest virtual MALAT symposium and have connected with one of the recent MALAT graduates who worked with VR for his final project. I think these efforts could tick all the boxes of a cMOOC with the exception of the massive part (although the xMOOC fits that part) but there are likely other learners out there doing similar things in the same subject matter. To really create a cMOOC in terms of a relationship with an institution I would probably formalize more of the network so for example I might go on Twitter, invite my community there to join me in a synchronous session with an AR expert of some kind, lay out the networks, hashtags and blogs of our network and invite people to share their thoughts on the subject matter. Again, it may not end up being massive but it could be.
Thanks for your questions, they have helped me draft out some of the thinking about the democratisation of education aspects of my inquiry and how behaviourism could still fit into the principles but could likely never be the sole pedagogy in any environment that was grounded in those democratic pillars but could still play a supporting role.
Reference:
Watters, A. (2021). Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning. The MIT Press.
May 17, 2022 at 8:27 am
Hi Karen,
Great post. Indeed, the future rarely goes to plan.
I was interested to learn that there is such a thing as a cMOOC, using connectivism. But I am curious why, in the general academic discourse, MOOCs and eLearnings for that matter, are negatively associated with behaviourism.
What do you think a constructivist or cognitivist MOOC would look like?
Thank you
Ben
May 18, 2022 at 1:25 pm
Hi Ben, in regards to your question about behaviourism I think it has negative connotations for a few reasons. Most of my thinking about this comes from Audrey Watters and her book Teaching Machines (2021). Behaviourism was brought into play by Skinner in an early example of a self proclaimed disruptor of education using technology to automate learning. Skinner pronounced that his learning machines would disrupt and change the education landscape, improved forever. We have now seen different renditions of education aligned with for profit motives making the same proclamations ever since, including with MOOCs in the early 2010s. Skinner believed in his behaviourism pedagogy as the solution to all the problems of education he went so far as to build a crib for a baby to grow up in that would provide all of the child’s needs in an automated fashion believing this would result in a well developed and educated child.
Behaviourism is really about memorizing without considering, responding without rationale. We are given information and act on it and if we receive negative feedback we will then at some point change our response so that we receive positive feedback. At its most extreme it’s just about seeking memorized automated responses. Students learn what the response should be to get the positive feedback but not how or why and not how to grow their knowledge about the subject matter. This is true for the xMOOC I am in where I am coding Swift. I follow the video, if I do it correctly the code works. For me, I know if that was the only thing I did to propel my learning I would not be able to expand my knowledge or work with it in any innovative way in the future so I seek other ways to connect with the subject.
In regards to your constructivist MOOC question and what that might look like I attempted to describe this in my response to Alisha in my earlier post but they used to look like a MOOC with blogging, connecting on social media and with a facilitator at the centre of the learning. Now I think it’s more de-centralized, learner driven and makes use of the networks available to create learning but may not have the Massive piece of the definition any longer. For my Swift coding I am in the xMOOC registered through Coursera, but am also on Github communities and now Twitter and have connected with AR developers in both spaces, I am on Youtube looking at how other developers are working with Swift and I have reached out to other academics to ask them about the future of AR, I also attended a session in the latest virtual MALAT symposium and have connected with one of the recent MALAT graduates who worked with VR for his final project. I think these efforts could tick all the boxes of a cMOOC with the exception of the massive part (although the xMOOC fits that part) but there are likely other learners out there doing similar things in the same subject matter. To really create a cMOOC in terms of a relationship with an institution I would probably formalize more of the network so for example I might go on Twitter, invite my community there to join me in a synchronous session with an AR expert of some kind, lay out the networks, hashtags and blogs of our network and invite people to share their thoughts on the subject matter. Again, it may not end up being massive but it could be.
Thanks for your questions, they have helped me draft out some of the thinking about the democratisation of education aspects of my inquiry and how behaviourism could still fit into the principles but could likely never be the sole pedagogy in any environment that was grounded in those democratic pillars but could still play a supporting role.
Reference:
Watters, A. (2021). Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning. The MIT Press.
May 18, 2022 at 8:22 am
Hi Karen,
Very interesting!
I remember the hype around MOOCs and jumped on the bandwagon in 2015. I recognized that project management was something I had little to no formal education in and it was an important part of my work. I enrolled in a Project Management MOOC and I was one of the people who actually paid for the certificate at the end of it so that I could add it to my resume. I wonder, how much weight do/should employers give to these kinds of certificates? I think it is really difficult to discern what a ‘certificate’ actually means when the quality of content and work effort required in MOOCs is so inconsistent. I did find value in the MOOC. I learned the principles of project management and enough to support me in my work projects.
Today, I would be less inclined to enroll in a MOOC for personal learning and more likely to search for a YouTube tutorial series or other open resources as the availability and ease of access of these technologies make them much more efficient. Illustrating the concept of creative destruction that you mention of the MOOC by these more convenient technologies.
Melissa
May 18, 2022 at 1:32 pm
Your comment about using youtube over a MOOC is really pertinent. I definitely question what the benefit is to learners when these videos are packaged in the MOOC platform and how if instead they were freely available on youtube instead,the learning could actually be richer as it may propel more connectivism elements.
Also, I think about how some of the stakeholders who benefit from the MOOC including the university partners and the subject matter experts, who in our case is promoting her podcast and book might also find the same returns by leaving the MOOC platform, opening up their work in youtube and using the networks they have to invite learners in a decentralized learning journey. I also think they would find themselves in a more ethical position by doing so as universities and faculty would be aligning with public goods rather than privatization of post secondary education dollars.
May 18, 2022 at 8:22 am
Hi Karen,
Very interesting!
I remember the hype around MOOCs and jumped on the bandwagon in 2015. I recognized that project management was something I had little to no formal education in and it was an important part of my work. I enrolled in a Project Management MOOC and I was one of the people who actually paid for the certificate at the end of it so that I could add it to my resume. I wonder, how much weight do/should employers give to these kinds of certificates? I think it is really difficult to discern what a ‘certificate’ actually means when the quality of content and work effort required in MOOCs is so inconsistent. I did find value in the MOOC. I learned the principles of project management and enough to support me in my work projects.
Today, I would be less inclined to enroll in a MOOC for personal learning and more likely to search for a YouTube tutorial series or other open resources as the availability and ease of access of these technologies make them much more efficient. Illustrating the concept of creative destruction that you mention of the MOOC by these more convenient technologies.
Melissa
May 18, 2022 at 1:32 pm
Your comment about using youtube over a MOOC is really pertinent. I definitely question what the benefit is to learners when these videos are packaged in the MOOC platform and how if instead they were freely available on youtube instead,the learning could actually be richer as it may propel more connectivism elements.
Also, I think about how some of the stakeholders who benefit from the MOOC including the university partners and the subject matter experts, who in our case is promoting her podcast and book might also find the same returns by leaving the MOOC platform, opening up their work in youtube and using the networks they have to invite learners in a decentralized learning journey. I also think they would find themselves in a more ethical position by doing so as universities and faculty would be aligning with public goods rather than privatization of post secondary education dollars.
May 20, 2022 at 9:35 pm
Thank you for the detailed reply Karen. I’m glad the discourse help formulate your ideas.
May 20, 2022 at 9:35 pm
Thank you for the detailed reply Karen. I’m glad the discourse help formulate your ideas.