Try as I might, I can't get ways from MOOCs this week. We had a fascinating discussion at our local PedR meeting on Tuesday. OK, it was more I talked, they tried to get a word in edgeways, but I get animated when the subject comes up. I hope the outcome of that particular discussion will be fruitful, and it left me feeling in a more positive state of mind than when I was asked to write about MOOCs for the LSE Impact of Social Sciences blog, where this post has just been published. After the Gold Rush
I was hoping for replacement
When the sun burst through the sky.
Neil Young
MOOCS, Massive Online Open Courses, is the most hyped educational buzzword of the last year. Alan Cann reflects on what still needs to be done after the hysteria dies down. You can read more about his adventures in the land of MOOC at: http://scienceoftheinvisible.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/MOOC
Who put the mooc in the mooc, mooc, mooc, mooc, mooc?
MOOCs have had a reasonably long history, although the term itself is newer than the idea. In 2001 and 2002 the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in the USA funded the Carnegie Mellon University Open Learning Initiative and the MIT Open Courseware project which made course materials from these institutions freely available online under Creative Commons licences. The term MOOC was invented by David Cormier and Bryan Alexander at the University of Manitoba in Canada in 2008. In 2011 MIT OCW morphed into MITx and in 2012, MIT and Harvard joined together to form edX. Not wishing to be left out, a group of UK universities headed by the Open University announced Futurelearn late in 2012.
Show me the money
The course that really grabbed widespread attention was the Stanford University Artificial Intelligence course by Peter Norvig and Sebastian Thrun in the autumn of 2011 which attracted 160,000 registered students. 20,000 from 190 countries completed the course and received a “statement of accomplishment” from Stanford University [see Update below]. On the back of this, Thrun spun out the private company Udacity in 2012 and has subsequently raised over US$15 million in venture capital for the venture. Stanford professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller established Coursera shortly after, and have now attracted over US$22m venture capital. This is not a cottage industry. Rather, it reflects the market driven system of higher education in the USA, and increasingly, in the UK.
The Great Schism
The term MOOC reflects the educational philosophy of the early pioneers. Although free (as in free beer) is not part of the etymology, this is implicit, reflecting the origins of the movement in open source software and online distribution. While the offerings of private companies such as Udacity and Coursera remain freely available at the point of use, these are free as in free speech (which has to be paid for). As is the way with Internet companies, business models during the early rounds of capitalization consist of plentiful smoke, mirrors and optimism. Realistic business models are slowly beginning to emerge (WSJ, 2013). Udacity led the way by offering to match “graduates” of its computer science courses with selected employers, including Google, and more recently, by developing employer-sponsored courses with partners such as Microsoft, NVIDIA and Wolfram. Coursera is developing similar employer-matching services and recently announced that it will begin charging students $30 to $100 for “verified certificates”.
More importantly, the privateers have departed from the original conception of MOOCs as “open”, meaning that there is unrestricted access to course materials under Creative Commons licences. The development of early MOOCs was strongly influenced by connectivism, based on concepts of networked knowledge and social learning (Siemens, 2008). They were deliberately platform agnostic in contrast to the closed platforms developed and trumpeted by commercial players. To underline this distinction, Stephen Downes is credited with proposing the terms "cMOOC" and "xMOOC" to distinguish the two strands evolving from the early origins.
Is this a bubble I see before me?
Clearly it is, as defined by such large speculative cash inflows into non-profit making ventures. Although there have not yet been any public MOOC provider flotations following the ill-fated Facebook IPO, those of us who have been around this particular block before are haunted by the expensive and embarrassing failure of UKeU at a cost to the public purse of over £50m. This time around governments on both sides of the Atlantic are happy for private companies to bear the risk, and presumably to reap any future gains. Massive online courses imply global audiences, probably to the detriment of overseas student recruitment by public universities. Amazon and Starbuck illustrate how well successive UK governments have been able to recoup taxation on UK economic activity carried out by multinationals.
Never mind the quality, feel the width
No UK university and few schools now operate without an online virtual learning environment and no-one in their right mind doubts the value of online delivery in leveraging the efforts of academic staff and minimising costs. In spite of years of experience, the thorny issue of measuring quality in online education (and in higher education in general, Gibbs, 2010), remains substantially unresolved. Although there is much to be gleaned from the smorgasbord of free courses that online providers offer, irate blog posts from many users show there is still much to be learned in this field in terms of both pedagogy and “customer” service.
Udacity has developed an in house platform consisting of live mini-lectures via screen capture videos with integrated MCQs. By focussing on a limited range of courses spanning maths and computer science and by developing in house Udacity has managed to present a fairly uniform interface to users (or students, if you will). Coursera faces a much bigger problem because it spans a wide range of content including humanities and arts courses (Knox et al, 2012). In response, it has developed an online peer grading model, although this has received criticism due to game playing and inappropriate behavior by some course participants. The bigger problem Coursera faces is that its courses are poorly-adapted versions of content originally developed elsewhere by its partner institutions, lured in by fears of missing the boat and by Coursera’s promised revenue sharing model.
MOOCs as cargo cults
Far from the hype that MOOCs will replace traditional universities, anyone who studies the evidence soon sees that MOOCs are augmentation rather than replacement of formal educational models. It is fitting that universities should contribute to improving public knowledge by offering free online courses. But connectivism in particular is a step too far for most learners - particularly less experienced learners - who fail without the scaffolding provided by traditional degree structures and support. Across the board completion rates are low, typically less than 10%. While this may be a consequence of free (as in disposable), does it matter why people fail, only that they do? Doug Holton has notably skewered the MOOC hype as a cargo cult which fails to understand how education works (Holton, 2012). MOOCs are yet another example of the Innovator’s Dilemma - that new technologies displace rather than replace earlier technologies (Christensen, 2011). Think newspapers - radio - television - Internet. Think private tutors - public universities - Internet. MOOCs are here to stay. But we all need to calm down and carry on. And a more thoughtful approach to pedagogical effectiveness wouldn’t hurt either.
References
Christensen, C. (2011). The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business. HarperBusiness. ISBN 0062060244.
Daniel, J. (2012). Making Sense of MOOCs: Musings in a maze of myth, paradox and possibility. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 3.
Gibbs, G. (2010). Dimensions of quality. York: Higher Education Academy.
Holton, D. (2012) https://plus.google.com/u/0/105172824293093013179/posts/CzmVHpT49xc
Knox, J., Bayne,, S., MacLeod, H., Ross, J. and Sinclair, C. (2012) MOOC pedagogy: the challenges of developing for Coursera. ALT-N http://newsletter.alt.ac.uk/2012/08/mooc-pedagogy-the-challenges-of-developing-for-coursera/
Siemens, G. (2008). Connectivism: a learning theory for the digital age. http://www.itdl.org/Journal/Jan_05/article01
WSJ. Online Courses Look for a Business Model. 01 January 2013 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324339204578173421673664106.html
Update:
Helpful correction from Seb Schmoller: "The AI course Statement of Accomplishment was not from Stanford University. It was issued as a secure PDF of some kind, signed by Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig, and headed “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence”. It has the following disclaimer: “This online offering of Introduction to Artificial Intelligence does not affirm that you were enrolled as a Stanford student in any way; it does not confer a Stanford grade; it does not confer Stanford credit; and it does not confer a Stanford degree or certificate.”"
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