MOOCs democratising education? I am not so sure!

There are many ways to look at MOOCs, but my preferred way is to regard them as one particular design for a technology-enhanced environment for learning. However, they are not just some random kind but one that has dominated the educational headlines for over a year now. Their notoriety comes, I surmise, from their association with elite or tier-one universities in the USA and the massive financial backing the MOOC providing companies have received. This success, however, does not exempt us from the obligation to assess the many claims that are made for their value qua learning environment, quite the contrary. So, are they as efficient financially as they are claimed to be? Do they indeed deliver the high-quality learning experiences that the MOOC platform providers want us to believe they do? Do they offer attractive forms of learning? And, also, will they democratise education around the globe, as for example Coursera suggests: “We believe in connecting people to a great education so that anyone around the world can learn without limits”. This last claim is the topic of my concern here.

The argument for the democratising effect of MOOCs is that, since they are freely available, at no cost to the student, they increase access to higher education. MOOCs, the argument goes, allows anybody in the world with Internet access to lavish themselves at the fountains of knowledge that top universities have decided to put online. This abstract argument is often embellished by stories about youngsters in developing countries who have performed excellently in some MOOC, thereby gaining access to scholarships that allow them to continue their studies at the very premises of the MOOC providing elite universities. Although I am willing to accept that it is quite a felicitous turn of events for these individuals, I will argue that these stories do not constitute evidence for the democratisation of higher education or its desirability. My argument is two-pronged. I will first argue that MOOCs are not a democratising force in the sense we commonly understand democratic; secondly, I will argue that we should have serious doubts about letting MOOCs rule education worldwide.

To flesh out my argument, let us assume that MOOCs will radically change the landscape of higher education in the world. Setting aside for the moment the effects MOOCs may have in the developed world, suppose that universities in the developing world would cease operating or would adopt the status of a MOOC study centre. Presumably, such universities would enter a kind of licensing deal with a MOOC provider. The deal could allow them, for example, to act as a hub for students to get together and collaborate, to offer face-to-face tutoring services, to stage the MOOC’s assessment (not for credits), or to set their own exams (for credit). So essentially they act as a conduit for educational content developed and maintained elsewhere. This scenario is not far off, it has been seriously considered by Dheeraj Sanghi, a professor of computer science at a university in India (blogpost, July 20, 2012: MOOC: Massively Open Online Courses). Would such an arrangement constitute a case of democratising higher education?

There can be no doubt that under this scenario many more people now have access to high-quality, university-level content than previously was the case. Also, they can  participate in forum discussions with peers across the globe, further honing their skills, and take tests, which help them assess their knowledgeability. This clearly constitutes a widening of their opportunities to learn. But is it a case of democratising education? I think not. Democracy is about people’s (legal) right to co-determine the decisions that affect them, their lives and futures or, in the words of Tony Bates ‘their hopes and dreams’ (blogpost February 5, 2012: When MOOCs crash and burn. online learning and distance education resources). With MOOCs, I see very little of that. In MOOCs that are funded by venture capital (Coursera, Udacity a.o.) decisions are made by the investors, for whom returns on investments are the key concern, not people's hopes and dreams. And even in MOOCs such as Harvard and MIT’s edX, funded by donations, influence may be granted as a token of good will but not as a right. Please note that I am not here arguing that commercial and not-for-profit MOOC providers should be subject to democratic forces, I am merely concluding that, on a widely shared understanding of democratic, MOOCs cannot be said to democratise education.

One could rebut by saying that I take ‘democratisation literally while, obviously, the intention is merely to refer to widening access to education. And as I already argued, that is a lofty goal. However, should we embrace the kind of widening that MOOCs afford? Again, I don’t think so. My  argument here is that the MOOC way of widening access is objectionable on moral grounds. Courses, all courses even those in computer science, come laden with cultural values. For an illustration of this point, read Dheeraj Sanghi’s blogpost already referred to, but also examples given by Ghanashyam Sharma in his blogpost in the Chronicle of Higher Education (July 15, 2012: A MOOC Delusion: Why Visions to Educate the World Are Absurd.) Cultural values pervade the choice of courses, the elaboration of topics, the pedagogy chosen but also the examples and assignments given. Such value-ladenness is desirable; pedagogically, as it allows teachers to make their teaching fit in with students experiences, but also socio-politically as it allows teachers to let a course contribute to the development of local culture. Value-neutral courses thus exemplify bad teaching, assuming it is at all possible to achieve value-neutrality (which I don’t believe one can). Now, developing countries lack the financial and human resources to develop an educational system with extensive, high quality, ‘localised’ content. So when confronted with MOOCs developing countries cannot afford the luxury of refusing them. After all, any course is better than none and a course laden with Western values is better than one that teaches severely outdated topics. So developing countries end up surreptitiously importing Western value systems with MOOCs. To me, this amounts to a form of cultural imperialism (other will even go so far as to use the term neocolonialism, which I find less apt). The MOOC providers profit from the developing countries' dire financial situation. This is morally objectionable and, according to Michael Sandel in his What Money can't buy: the moral limits of markets, exemplifies the argument from coercion: developing countries really have no choice other than import MOOCs (Sloep, 2013: MOOCs, what about them? Some moral considerations).

Importantly, this need not be. The morally right thing to do would be to provide financial support to developing countries to develop their own courses or to help them get access to the needed human resources. This could be done via Open Educational Resources (OERs). OERs are not open to the objection of cultural imperialism as they may be jointly created and their courses, unlike MOOCs may be adapted (assuming they are made available under a share-alike Creative Commons license). As MOOCs divert funds from the development of OERs - the money that the Gates foundation donates to MOOCs is not available for OER development any more - they are a threat to the maturation of this alternative route. This may be seen as a third objection to the claim that MOOCs democratise education on a global scale.

So I don’t subscribe to the statement that MOOCs will democratise education around the globe. But the health of MOOCs as an educational innovation does not hinge on this. MOOCs have a lot more to offer than is claimed in such ‘absurd views’ (in the words of Ghanashyam Sharma). I welcome studies in their ability to be effective and efficient learning environments, but let’s evaluate claims to that effect in culturally homogeneous contexts only.

An earlier version of this blog post has been published as part of a roundtable discussion that was held to inaugurate the launch of a new journal on MOOCs: MOOCs Forum, published by May Ann Liebert, Inc. Manuscripts are welcome, you may consult me about ideas.
The argument for the democratising effect of MOOCs is that, since they are freely available, at no cost to the student, they increase access to higher education. MOOCs, the argument goes, allows anybody in the world with Internet access to lavish themselves at the fountains of knowledge that top universities have decided to put online. This abstract argument is often embellished by stories about youngsters in developing countries who have performed excellently in some MOOC, thereby gaining access to scholarships that allow them to continue their studies at the very premises of the MOOC providing elite universities. Although I am willing to accept that it is quite a felicitous turn of events for these individuals, I will argue that these stories do not constitute evidence for the democratisation of higher education or its desirability. My argument is two-pronged. I will first argue that MOOCs are not a democratising force in the sense we commonly understand democratic; secondly, I will argue that we should have serious doubts about letting MOOCs rule education worldwide.
To flesh out my argument, let us assume that MOOCs will radically change the landscape of higher education in the world. Setting aside for the moment the effects MOOCs may have in the developed world, suppose that universities in the developing world would cease operating or would adopt the status of a MOOC study centre. Presumably, such universities would enter a kind of licensing deal with a MOOC provider. The deal could allow them, for example, to act as a hub for students to get together and collaborate, to offer face-to-face tutoring services, to stage the MOOC’s assessment (not for credits), or to set their own exams (for credit). So essentially they act as a conduit for educational content developed and maintained elsewhere. This scenario is not far off, it has been seriously considered by Dheeraj Sanghi, a professor of computer science at a university in India (blogpost, July 20, 2012: MOOC: Massively Open Online Courses). Would such an arrangement constitute a case of democratising higher education?
There can be no doubt that under this scenario many more people now have access to high-quality, university-level content than previously was the case. Also, they can  participate in forum discussions with peers across the globe, further honing their skills, and take tests, which help them assess their knowledgeability. This clearly constitutes a widening of their opportunities to learn. But is it a case of democratising education? I think not. Democracy is about people’s (legal) right to co-determine the decisions that affect them, their lives and futures or, in the words of Tony Bates ‘their hopes and dreams’ (blogpost February 5, 2012: When MOOCs crash and burn. online learning and distance education resources). With MOOCs, I see very little of that. In MOOCs that are funded by venture capital (Coursera, Udacity a.o.) decisions are made by the investors, for whom returns on investments are the key concern, not people's hopes and dreams. And even in MOOCs such as Harvard and MIT’s edX, funded by donations, influence may be granted as a token of good will but not as a right. Please note that I am not here arguing that commercial and not-for-profit MOOC providers should be subject to democratic forces, I am merely concluding that, on a widely shared understanding of democratic, MOOCs cannot be said to democratise education. 
One could rebut by saying that I take ‘democratisation literally while, obviously, the intention is merely to refer to widening access to education. And as I already argued, that is a lofty goal. However, should we embrace the kind of widening that MOOCs afford? Again, I don’t think so. My  argument here is that the MOOC way of widening access is objectionable on moral grounds. Courses, all courses even those in computer science, come laden with cultural values. For an illustration of this point, read Dheeraj Sanghi’s blogpost already referred to, but also examples given by Ghanashyam Sharma in his blogpost in the Chronicle of Higher Education (July 15, 2012: A MOOC Delusion: Why Visions to Educate the World Are Absurd.) Cultural values pervade the choice of courses, the elaboration of topics, the pedagogy chosen but also the examples and assignments given. Such value-ladenness is desirable; pedagogically, as it allows teachers to make their teaching fit in with students experiences, but also socio-politically as it allows teachers to let a course contribute to the development of local culture. Value-neutral courses thus exemplify bad teaching, assuming it is at all possible to achieve value-neutrality (which I don’t believe one can). Now, developing countries lack the financial and human resources to develop an educational system with extensive, high quality, ‘localised’ content. So when confronted with MOOCs developing countries cannot afford the luxury of refusing them. After all, any course is better than none and a course laden with Western values is better than one that teaches severely outdated topics. So developing countries end up surreptitiously importing Western value systems with MOOCs. To me, this amounts to a form of cultural imperialism (other will even go so far as to use the term neocolonialism, which I find less apt). The MOOC providers profit from the developing countries' dire financial situation. This is morally objectionable and, according to Michael Sandel in his What Money can't buy: the moral limits of markets, exemplifies the argument from coercion: developing countries really have no choice other than import MOOCs (Sloep, 2013: MOOCs, what about them? Some moral considerations). 
Importantly, this need not be. The morally right thing to do would be to provide financial support to developing countries to develop their own courses or to help them get access to the needed human resources. This could be done via Open Educational Resources (OERs). OERs are not open to the objection of cultural imperialism as they may be jointly created and their courses, unlike MOOCs may be adapted (assuming they are made available under a share-alike Creative Commons license). As MOOCs divert funds from the development of OERs - the money that the Gates foundation donates to MOOCs is not available for OER development any more - they are a threat to the maturation of this alternative route. This may be seen as a third objection to the claim that MOOCs democratise education on a global scale. 
So I don’t subscribe to the statement that MOOCs will democratise education around the globe. But the health of MOOCs as an educational innovation does not hinge on this. MOOCs have a lot more to offer than is claimed in such ‘absurd views’ (in the words of Ghanashyam Sharma). I welcome studies in their ability to be effective and efficient learning environments, but let’s evaluate claims to that effect in culturally homogeneous contexts only. 
An earlier version of this blog post has been published as part of a roundtable discussion that was held to inaugurate the launch of a new journal on MOOCs: MOOCs Forum, published by May Ann Liebert, Inc. Manuscripts are welcome, you may consult me about ideas.The argument for the democratising effect of MOOCs is that, since they are freely available, at no cost to the student, they increase access to higher education. MOOCs, the argument goes, allows anybody in the world with Internet access to lavish themselves at the fountains of knowledge that top universities have decided to put online. This abstract argument is often embellished by stories about youngsters in developing countries who have performed excellently in some MOOC, thereby gaining access to scholarships that allow them to continue their studies at the very premises of the MOOC providing elite universities. Although I am willing to accept that it is quite a felicitous turn of events for these individuals, I will argue that these stories do not constitute evidence for the democratisation of higher education or its desirability. My argument is two-pronged. I will first argue that MOOCs are not a democratising force in the sense we commonly understand democratic; secondly, I will argue that we should have serious doubts about letting MOOCs rule education worldwide.To flesh out my argument, let us assume that MOOCs will radically change the landscape of higher education in the world. Setting aside for the moment the effects MOOCs may have in the developed world, suppose that universities in the developing world would cease operating or would adopt the status of a MOOC study centre. Presumably, such universities would enter a kind of licensing deal with a MOOC provider. The deal could allow them, for example, to act as a hub for students to get together and collaborate, to offer face-to-face tutoring services, to stage the MOOC’s assessment (not for credits), or to set their own exams (for credit). So essentially they act as a conduit for educational content developed and maintained elsewhere. This scenario is not far off, it has been seriously considered by Dheeraj Sanghi, a professor of computer science at a university in India (blogpost, July 20, 2012: MOOC: Massively Open Online Courses). Would such an arrangement constitute a case of democratising higher education?There can be no doubt that under this scenario many more people now have access to high-quality, university-level content than previously was the case. Also, they can  participate in forum discussions with peers across the globe, further honing their skills, and take tests, which help them assess their knowledgeability. This clearly constitutes a widening of their opportunities to learn. But is it a case of democratising education? I think not. Democracy is about people’s (legal) right to co-determine the decisions that affect them, their lives and futures or, in the words of Tony Bates ‘their hopes and dreams’ (blogpost February 5, 2012: When MOOCs crash and burn. online learning and distance education resources). With MOOCs, I see very little of that. In MOOCs that are funded by venture capital (Coursera, Udacity a.o.) decisions are made by the investors, for whom returns on investments are the key concern, not people's hopes and dreams. And even in MOOCs such as Harvard and MIT’s edX, funded by donations, influence may be granted as a token of good will but not as a right. Please note that I am not here arguing that commercial and not-for-profit MOOC providers should be subject to democratic forces, I am merely concluding that, on a widely shared understanding of democratic, MOOCs cannot be said to democratise education. One could rebut by saying that I take ‘democratisation literally while, obviously, the intention is merely to refer to widening access to education. And as I already argued, that is a lofty goal. However, should we embrace the kind of widening that MOOCs afford? Again, I don’t think so. My  argument here is that the MOOC way of widening access is objectionable on moral grounds. Courses, all courses even those in computer science, come laden with cultural values. For an illustration of this point, read Dheeraj Sanghi’s blogpost already referred to, but also examples given by Ghanashyam Sharma in his blogpost in the Chronicle of Higher Education (July 15, 2012: A MOOC Delusion: Why Visions to Educate the World Are Absurd.) Cultural values pervade the choice of courses, the elaboration of topics, the pedagogy chosen but also the examples and assignments given. Such value-ladenness is desirable; pedagogically, as it allows teachers to make their teaching fit in with students experiences, but also socio-politically as it allows teachers to let a course contribute to the development of local culture. Value-neutral courses thus exemplify bad teaching, assuming it is at all possible to achieve value-neutrality (which I don’t believe one can). Now, developing countries lack the financial and human resources to develop an educational system with extensive, high quality, ‘localised’ content. So when confronted with MOOCs developing countries cannot afford the luxury of refusing them. After all, any course is better than none and a course laden with Western values is better than one that teaches severely outdated topics. So developing countries end up surreptitiously importing Western value systems with MOOCs. To me, this amounts to a form of cultural imperialism (other will even go so far as to use the term neocolonialism, which I find less apt). The MOOC providers profit from the developing countries' dire financial situation. This is morally objectionable and, according to Michael Sandel in his What Money can't buy: the moral limits of markets, exemplifies the argument from coercion: developing countries really have no choice other than import MOOCs (Sloep, 2013: MOOCs, what about them? Some moral considerations). Importantly, this need not be. The morally right thing to do would be to provide financial support to developing countries to develop their own courses or to help them get access to the needed human resources. This could be done via Open Educational Resources (OERs). OERs are not open to the objection of cultural imperialism as they may be jointly created and their courses, unlike MOOCs may be adapted (assuming they are made available under a share-alike Creative Commons license). As MOOCs divert funds from the development of OERs - the money that the Gates foundation donates to MOOCs is not available for OER development any more - they are a threat to the maturation of this alternative route. This may be seen as a third objection to the claim that MOOCs democratise education on a global scale. So I don’t subscribe to the statement that MOOCs will democratise education around the globe. But the health of MOOCs as an educational innovation does not hinge on this. MOOCs have a lot more to offer than is claimed in such ‘absurd views’ (in the words of Ghanashyam Sharma). I welcome studies in their ability to be effective and efficient learning environments, but let’s evaluate claims to that effect in culturally homogeneous contexts only. An earlier version of this blog post has been published as part of a roundtable discussion that was held to inaugurate the launch of a new journal on MOOCs: MOOCs Forum, published by May Ann Liebert, Inc. Manuscripts are welcome, you may consult me about ideas.The argument for the democratising effect of MOOCs is that, since they are freely available, at no cost to the student, they increase access to higher education. MOOCs, the argument goes, allows anybody in the world with Internet access to lavish themselves at the fountains of knowledge that top universities have decided to put online. This abstract argument is often embellished by stories about youngsters in developing countries who have performed excellently in some MOOC, thereby gaining access to scholarships that allow them to continue their studies at the very premises of the MOOC providing elite universities. Although I am willing to accept that it is quite a felicitous turn of events for these individuals, I will argue that these stories do not constitute evidence for the democratisation of higher education or its desirability. My argument is two-pronged. I will first argue that MOOCs are not a democratising force in the sense we commonly understand democratic; secondly, I will argue that we should have serious doubts about letting MOOCs rule education worldwide.
To flesh out my argument, let us assume that MOOCs will radically change the landscape of higher education in the world. Setting aside for the moment the effects MOOCs may have in the developed world, suppose that universities in the developing world would cease operating or would adopt the status of a MOOC study centre. Presumably, such universities would enter a kind of licensing deal with a MOOC provider. The deal could allow them, for example, to act as a hub for students to get together and collaborate, to offer face-to-face tutoring services, to stage the MOOC’s assessment (not for credits), or to set their own exams (for credit). So essentially they act as a conduit for educational content developed and maintained elsewhere. This scenario is not far off, it has been seriously considered by Dheeraj Sanghi, a professor of computer science at a university in India (blogpost, July 20, 2012: MOOC: Massively Open Online Courses). Would such an arrangement constitute a case of democratising higher education?There can be no doubt that under this scenario many more people now have access to high-quality, university-level content than previously was the case. Also, they can  participate in forum discussions with peers across the globe, further honing their skills, and take tests, which help them assess their knowledgeability. This clearly constitutes a widening of their opportunities to learn. But is it a case of democratising education? I think not. Democracy is about people’s (legal) right to co-determine the decisions that affect them, their lives and futures or, in the words of Tony Bates ‘their hopes and dreams’ (blogpost February 5, 2012: When MOOCs crash and burn. online learning and distance education resources). With MOOCs, I see very little of that. In MOOCs that are funded by venture capital (Coursera, Udacity a.o.) decisions are made by the investors, for whom returns on investments are the key concern, not people's hopes and dreams. And even in MOOCs such as Harvard and MIT’s edX, funded by donations, influence may be granted as a token of good will but not as a right. Please note that I am not here arguing that commercial and not-for-profit MOOC providers should be subject to democratic forces, I am merely concluding that, on a widely shared understanding of democratic, MOOCs cannot be said to democratise education. One could rebut by saying that I take ‘democratisation literally while, obviously, the intention is merely to refer to widening access to education. And as I already argued, that is a lofty goal. However, should we embrace the kind of widening that MOOCs afford? Again, I don’t think so. My  argument here is that the MOOC way of widening access is objectionable on moral grounds. Courses, all courses even those in computer science, come laden with cultural values. For an illustration of this point, read Dheeraj Sanghi’s blogpost already referred to, but also examples given by Ghanashyam Sharma in his blogpost in the Chronicle of Higher Education (July 15, 2012: A MOOC Delusion: Why Visions to Educate the World Are Absurd.) Cultural values pervade the choice of courses, the elaboration of topics, the pedagogy chosen but also the examples and assignments given. Such value-ladenness is desirable; pedagogically, as it allows teachers to make their teaching fit in with students experiences, but also socio-politically as it allows teachers to let a course contribute to the development of local culture. Value-neutral courses thus exemplify bad teaching, assuming it is at all possible to achieve value-neutrality (which I don’t believe one can). Now, developing countries lack the financial and human resources to develop an educational system with extensive, high quality, ‘localised’ content. So when confronted with MOOCs developing countries cannot afford the luxury of refusing them. After all, any course is better than none and a course laden with Western values is better than one that teaches severely outdated topics. So developing countries end up surreptitiously importing Western value systems with MOOCs. To me, this amounts to a form of cultural imperialism (other will even go so far as to use the term neocolonialism, which I find less apt). The MOOC providers profit from the developing countries' dire financial situation. This is morally objectionable and, according to Michael Sandel in his What Money can't buy: the moral limits of markets, exemplifies the argument from coercion: developing countries really have no choice other than import MOOCs (Sloep, 2013: MOOCs, what about them? Some moral considerations). Importantly, this need not be. The morally right thing to do would be to provide financial support to developing countries to develop their own courses or to help them get access to the needed human resources. This could be done via Open Educational Resources (OERs). OERs are not open to the objection of cultural imperialism as they may be jointly created and their courses, unlike MOOCs may be adapted (assuming they are made available under a share-alike Creative Commons license). As MOOCs divert funds from the development of OERs - the money that the Gates foundation donates to MOOCs is not available for OER development any more - they are a threat to the maturation of this alternative route. This may be seen as a third objection to the claim that MOOCs democratise education on a global scale. So I don’t subscribe to the statement that MOOCs will democratise education around the globe. But the health of MOOCs as an educational innovation does not hinge on this. MOOCs have a lot more to offer than is claimed in such ‘absurd views’ (in the words of Ghanashyam Sharma). I welcome studies in their ability to be effective and efficient learning environments, but let’s evaluate claims to that effect in culturally homogeneous contexts only. An earlier version of this blog post has been published as part of a roundtable discussion that was held to inaugurate the launch of a new journal on MOOCs: MOOCs Forum, published by May Ann Liebert, Inc. Manuscripts are welcome, you may consult me about ideas.The argument for the democratising effect of MOOCs is that, since they are freely available, at no cost to the student, they increase access to higher education. MOOCs, the argument goes, allows anybody in the world with Internet access to lavish themselves at the fountains of knowledge that top universities have decided to put online. This abstract argument is often embellished by stories about youngsters in developing countries who have performed excellently in some MOOC, thereby gaining access to scholarships that allow them to continue their studies at the very premises of the MOOC providing elite universities. Although I am willing to accept that it is quite a felicitous turn of events for these individuals, I will argue that these stories do not constitute evidence for the democratisation of higher education or its desirability. My argument is two-pronged. I will first argue that MOOCs are not a democratising force in the sense we commonly understand democratic; secondly, I will argue that we should have serious doubts about letting MOOCs rule education worldwide.
To flesh out my argument, let us assume that MOOCs will radically change the landscape of higher education in the world. Setting aside for the moment the effects MOOCs may have in the developed world, suppose that universities in the developing world would cease operating or would adopt the status of a MOOC study centre. Presumably, such universities would enter a kind of licensing deal with a MOOC provider. The deal could allow them, for example, to act as a hub for students to get together and collaborate, to offer face-to-face tutoring services, to stage the MOOC’s assessment (not for credits), or to set their own exams (for credit). So essentially they act as a conduit for educational content developed and maintained elsewhere. This scenario is not far off, it has been seriously considered by Dheeraj Sanghi, a professor of computer science at a university in India (blogpost, July 20, 2012: MOOC: Massively Open Online Courses). Would such an arrangement constitute a case of democratising higher education?
There can be no doubt that under this scenario many more people now have access to high-quality, university-level content than previously was the case. Also, they can  participate in forum discussions with peers across the globe, further honing their skills, and take tests, which help them assess their knowledgeability. This clearly constitutes a widening of their opportunities to learn. But is it a case of democratising education? I think not. Democracy is about people’s (legal) right to co-determine the decisions that affect them, their lives and futures or, in the words of Tony Bates ‘their hopes and dreams’ (blogpost February 5, 2012: When MOOCs crash and burn. online learning and distance education resources). With MOOCs, I see very little of that. In MOOCs that are funded by venture capital (Coursera, Udacity a.o.) decisions are made by the investors, for whom returns on investments are the key concern, not people's hopes and dreams. And even in MOOCs such as Harvard and MIT’s edX, funded by donations, influence may be granted as a token of good will but not as a right. Please note that I am not here arguing that commercial and not-for-profit MOOC providers should be subject to democratic forces, I am merely concluding that, on a widely shared understanding of democratic, MOOCs cannot be said to democratise education. 
One could rebut by saying that I take ‘democratisation literally while, obviously, the intention is merely to refer to widening access to education. And as I already argued, that is a lofty goal. However, should we embrace the kind of widening that MOOCs afford? Again, I don’t think so. My  argument here is that the MOOC way of widening access is objectionable on moral grounds. Courses, all courses even those in computer science, come laden with cultural values. For an illustration of this point, read Dheeraj Sanghi’s blogpost already referred to, but also examples given by Ghanashyam Sharma in his blogpost in the Chronicle of Higher Education (July 15, 2012: A MOOC Delusion: Why Visions to Educate the World Are Absurd.) Cultural values pervade the choice of courses, the elaboration of topics, the pedagogy chosen but also the examples and assignments given. Such value-ladenness is desirable; pedagogically, as it allows teachers to make their teaching fit in with students experiences, but also socio-politically as it allows teachers to let a course contribute to the development of local culture. Value-neutral courses thus exemplify bad teaching, assuming it is at all possible to achieve value-neutrality (which I don’t believe one can). Now, developing countries lack the financial and human resources to develop an educational system with extensive, high quality, ‘localised’ content. So when confronted with MOOCs developing countries cannot afford the luxury of refusing them. After all, any course is better than none and a course laden with Western values is better than one that teaches severely outdated topics. So developing countries end up surreptitiously importing Western value systems with MOOCs. To me, this amounts to a form of cultural imperialism (other will even go so far as to use the term neocolonialism, which I find less apt). The MOOC providers profit from the developing countries' dire financial situation. This is morally objectionable and, according to Michael Sandel in his What Money can't buy: the moral limits of markets, exemplifies the argument from coercion: developing countries really have no choice other than import MOOCs (Sloep, 2013: MOOCs, what about them? Some moral considerations). 
Importantly, this need not be. The morally right thing to do would be to provide financial support to developing countries to develop their own courses or to help them get access to the needed human resources. This could be done via Open Educational Resources (OERs). OERs are not open to the objection of cultural imperialism as they may be jointly created and their courses, unlike MOOCs may be adapted (assuming they are made available under a share-alike Creative Commons license). As MOOCs divert funds from the development of OERs - the money that the Gates foundation donates to MOOCs is not available for OER development any more - they are a threat to the maturation of this alternative route. This may be seen as a third objection to the claim that MOOCs democratise education on a global scale. 
So I don’t subscribe to the statement that MOOCs will democratise education around the globe. But the health of MOOCs as an educational innovation does not hinge on this. MOOCs have a lot more to offer than is claimed in such ‘absurd views’ (in the words of Ghanashyam Sharma). I welcome studies in their ability to be effective and efficient learning environments, but let’s evaluate claims to that effect in culturally homogeneous contexts only. 
An earlier version of this blog post has been published as part of a roundtable discussion that was held to inaugurate the launch of a new journal on MOOCs: MOOCs Forum, published by May Ann Liebert, Inc. Manuscripts are welcome, you may consult me about ideas.

Learning in networks and in communities of practice

In the context of an article on MOOCs I co-author, one of the reviewers raised the question of how networks and communities, in particular networks for learning and communities of practice, are different from each other. Without tracing the complex history of learning in social networks, one can safely say that all of it is rooted in the pioneering work on social learning done by such people as Albert  Bandura and, later on, Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger. Was Bandura interested in all kinds of learning, primarily formal, school-based learning, Lave and Wenger thank their fame to their development of the concept of a community of practice. The participants of such communities learn by peripheral participation, they claim, that is through their presence in the many professional discussions that take place in the context of the community. Thus learning is social, as with Bandura, but also almost accidental.

Lave and Wenger, also in their later work, stress the importance of strong links between the people that participate in a community of practice. Lave and Wenger's case studies are about people who see each other frequently in the course of their jobs or occupations and exchange 'war' stories. They discuss the problems and challenges they have had to face, the solutions they came up with. These stories become part of the group lore and are exchanged, often at informal occasions (coffee breaks rather than team meetings). John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid in their book The Social Life of Information tell a similar tale about people who repair xerox machines. They illustrate how detrimental it is to the quality of the repairmen's work if this social learning dimension is forgotten, for instance by making it next to impossible for them to meet informally, in an effort to increase efficiency. So people do learn in communities of practice, if only to improve and fine-tune their existing knowledge. They learn in virtue of the tight social network that the community constitutes, with (almost) everybody connected to everybody else through regular and topic-bound interactions.

Networked learning does not focus on the strong links but emphasises the importance of weak and latent links. Chris Jones was one of the first to establish this as a principle. Of course, weakly let alone non-linked people do not learn from each other, precisely for want of the social interactions that learning requires. However, the importance of weak and latent links for networked learning is their potential to develop, if needed, into the kinds of strong links that sustain communities (of practice). So a learning network is thought to consist of weak, strong and latent (not-yet-existent) links. Strongly linked individuals learn from each other, not or weakly linked individuals learn from each other once they get connected. This requires i) that there is a need to learn from each other through a shared interest, problem, challenge; ii) that the learners are somehow brought together if the need arises. Note that the strength of a learning network relative to a community of practice is that many more people may be mobilised to become a member of one's community of practice, should the need arise.

It is well-known that our mental ability to maintain strong relationships is limited (Roger Dunbar believes it is in the order of 150 people that we can keep track of; see also Sutcliffe et al.), so technology is needed ensure that the right kinds of people, the people that have the potentially to help solve the problem at hand, can indeed be mobilised. In our own work, we have worked on such mobilising technologies. I discuss some of them in a forthcoming book chapter (Sloep). We have also coined the term 'ad-hoc transient group (community)' to denote the emergence - in the course of applying mobilising technologies -  of small groups that are dedicated to the particular problem at hand. Although such groups may disappear once the problem is solved, they may last and become or become integrated in genuine communities of practice.

This then leads to the following delineation of learning networks and communities of practice. Where a community of practice capitalises on the existing social ties between the community members for social learning to occur, a learning networks mobilises weak and latent links for that purpose. Doing so, leads to a conception of learning networks in which any particular instance of a learning networks consists of a non-exhaustive ensemble of partially overlapping, waxing and waning communities of practice; non-exhaustive because there may be learners who are in the network but in no community of practice (the ultimate lurker if you like); overlapping as learners may be a member of several communities of practice; waxing and waning to emphasise the dynamics of the structures. These dynamics are captured by the notion of ad-hoc transient groups, communities of practice in statu nascendi, which may grow and last, or disappear. So, the concepts of a community of practice and a learning network are notably different, but interdependent, indeed complimentary.

For the sake of completeness and not unjustly to claim originality, others have stumbled upon this idea of a network as an ensemble of communities of practice. Jon Dron and Terry Anderson wrote a paper talking about collectives, networks and groups, more recently Carolin Haythorthwaite discussed networks, crowds and communities. No doubt, others have expressed similar ideas.

Note added October 23d. This blog post has been reproduced as a Tally Fox Insight.


References
Bandura, A. (1977). Social Learning Theory. Oxford, England: Prentice Hall.
Brown, J. S., & Duguid, P. (2000). The social life of information. Boston Mass: Harvard Business School University Press.
Dron, J., & Anderson, T. (2009). How the Crowd Can Teach. In J Dron & T. Anderson (Eds.), How the Crowd Can Teach. Handbook of Research on Social Software and Developing Community Ontologies. Hershey, New York: IGI Global.
Haythornthwaite, C. (2011). Learning Networks, Crowds and Communities. In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge, LAK’11 (pp. 18–22). New York, NY, USA: ACM.
Dunbar, R. I. M. (1993). Co-Evolution Of Neocortex Size, Group Size And Language In Humans. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 16, 681–735. Retrieved from http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2004/03/the_dunbar_numb.html
Jones, C. (2008). Networked learning: weak links and boundaries. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 24(2), 87–89.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sloep, P. B. (2013). Networked professional learning. In A. Littlejohn & A. Margaryan (Eds.), Technology-enhanced Professional Learning: Processes, Practices and Tools (p. 97-108). London: Routledge.
Sutcliffe, A., Wang, D., & Dunbar, R. I. M. (2012). Social Relationships and the Emergence of Social Networks. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 15(4), 3. Retrieved from http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/15/4/3.html

All my scoops in July 2013 | Peter Sloep

As a service to my scoop.it follwers and readers, a blog post of mine containing the publication date, title, author and source of my s6 scoops in July, 2013.

02-07-2013	On the MOOC Challenge to Traditional Higher Education	Jonathan Marks	Commentary Magazine
04-07-2013	MOOCs in Europe, an overview	Pierre Dillenbourg	slides
05-07-2013	How to value the merits and demerits of MOOCs?	Peter B. Sloep	Stories to TEL, blog
09-07-2013	Beyond MOOC Hype	Ry Rivard	Inside Higher Ed.
15-07-2013	MOOCs as a Worldwide Neocolonial Force	James E Willis	Reflections on Teaching and Learning, blog
29-07-2013	In Connectivism, No One Can Hear You Scream: a Guide to Understanding the MOOC Novice	Keith Brennan	Hybrid Pedagogy
30-07-2013	Truths about MOOCs, Rees v Chait, and a bunch of other MOOC article links	Steve Krause	stevendkrause.com, blog

How to value the merits and demerits of MOOCs?

MOOCs or Massive Open Online Courses over the last year have dominated the headlines, in blogs and periodicals on higher education and educational technology (cf. my collection of scoops). This is particularly so in the USA but increasingly also in the rest of the world. Serious, scholarly journals and their publishers are following suit. Publisher MaryAnn Liebert for instance is about to launch an new journal MOOCs Forum. Even politicians worldwide have become interested, leading to discussions in California and Florida about the mandatory adoption of MOOCs or the European Union’s support for a European MOOC initiative, to mention just two examples.

MOOCs consist of videotaped lectures, interspersed with quizzes, usually concluded by a test that can be automatically graded. MOOCs exemplify online learning environments. Indeed, it looks as if MOOCs mark the discovery of the online realm by universities. However, over 15 years already, universities have used virtual learning environments or learning management systems to support their lecturing. What is remarkable about the current situation is that MOOCs for the first time are positioned as an alternative to lecture-based teaching. Thus far the online was a mere tool to be used in conjunction with lectures. However, positioning MOOCs as the sole alternative to lecturing in brick-and-mortar classrooms is utterly misleading. Doing so sweeps under the carpet a whole raft of learning environments that sit between these extremes. A comparison with the evolution of open and distance learning (ODL) will help explain what is wrong with this.

Open And Distance Learning

Given their brief to allow adults deprived of a higher education to acquire one while having day-time jobs and families, open and distance learning (ODL) institutions developed paper-based courses that essentially replaced lectures. These courses adopted an instructional model that tried to anticipate the problems students would run into by carving up the subject matter text in about four-hour units and interspersing the text with key words, explanations of technical terms, short quizzes to go with difficult passages, formative assessments with feedback, and more. A tutor was available in study centres at set times. They could also be contact by phone or fax. Also, if appropriate for enhancing the learning experience, additional materials were developed, such as television broadcasts, board games, audio interviews and simulations.

The advent of the Internet at first made little difference to this instructional model. Some elements in it were substituted by online versions thereof. Thus, email in part replaced meetings in study centres, paper workbooks became online workbooks, simulations would be done online rather than at a computer at the study centre, etc. Increasingly also, courses would refer to resources that were made available online, thus using the full potential of the information web (Web 1.0).  Notwithstanding the increased use of (Internet) technology, the underlying pedagogy remained unaltered. Very much a behaviourist instructional approach was followed, based on a transmission model of teaching, in which the teacher or course developer made information available that the student subsequently was to consume. Now note how this stage in the evolution of ODL very much resembles MOOCs. MOOCs too sport technological innovations, but the pedagogy they rely on is behaviourist, having a transmission model of knowledge transfer at its heart (Anderson & Dron, 2010).

When the information web became augmented by the social web (Web 2.0) some ten years ago, it became clear to ODL institutions that profoundly new opportunities arose. Online interaction among students and between students and their teachers became feasible. At first this led to the establishment of online classes - still well within the old, behaviourist model - with a teacher catering for small numbers of students gathered in an online class. However, soon enough one realised that the social technologies also could support entirely new pedagogies, with social-constructivist forms of learning; forms in which students were asked to become active producers rather than passive consumers, forms which require student to work in virtual groups on authentic assignments, forms that emphasise skills over knowledge, etc. Indeed, entirely new forms of learning arose, in which one uses the affordances of social networks, existing ones or bespoken ones, to learn by sharing and indeed creating knowledge. Such forms of networked learning are particularly interesting for accomplished learners, such as (budding) professionals. We have only begun to explore the opportunities here. Parenthetically, this networked learning movement has given rise to the birth of the original MOOCs, the so-called cMOOCs, which now have all but been overturned by the current xMOOCs.

Designing learning

ODL institutions ever since their establishment were forced carefully to think through the way they put their courses together, not being able to fall back on a longtime established modus operandi as can traditional universities. That is, they were forced to think about their teaching in terms of instructional designs. Such design thinking means inventorying user requirements, developing solutions to meet those, using existing theories to the extent that they are available and making informed guessed to the extent they aren’t. It also implies evaluating the resulting learning arrangements, in terms of their effectiveness, efficiency and satisfactoriness. Since  for ODL institutions, educational technology plays such a large part in these designs, they also developed a strength in researching technology-based educational innovation. Many open universities therefore have a strong tradition in educational research, particularly research in technology-enhanced learning. Traditional universities never so much felt the need to view their teaching arrangement as an instructional design, and consequently, they have never had the same urge to turn them into objects of research. If research was done, it had a very practical nature that, in design terminology, can best be described as optimising the existing designs, to wit lecture-based teaching. The lesson that particularly ODL institutions have learnt, is that properly evaluating educational arrangements requires them to be viewed as resulting from design decisions (but see footnote 1).

In conclusion

The discussion about the merits and demerits of MOOCs thus far has been conducted within the confines of extant teaching and learning paradigms. Since particularly in the USA, a university education is becoming ever more costly, it is the ability of MOOCs to cut costs that has dominated that discussion (see an earlier blogpost of mine for what I believe is wrong with this narrow economic focus). But if we want genuinely to assess the value of MOOCs, we must consider them as a specific kind of instructional design, one that meets a particular set of requirements and is suited for particular teaching contexts. Once we do that, we realise that MOOCs and traditional lecture-based teaching should not be juxtaposed, nor should the online and the offline for that matter. MOOCs and face-to-face lectures are just two possible learning environments in a plethora of possible ones each of which is dictated by a different suit of design considerations. And MOOCs are not the online incarnation of offline learning, nor are lectures the sole way of learning offline. Unearthing the underlying design considerations for the different MOOCs around, will bring clarity to the discussion as it shows where discussants come from. Of course, this nuanced approach flies in the faces of those who see MOOCs as an instrument to bring education into the Silicon Valley fold, with large profits due to homogeneity and near-zero transaction costs. So much the better, I would say.

_____________________

Note 1: I am emphatically not saying that traditional universities don’t do educational research. On the contrary, a lot of research is being done, also on instructional design. However, that research is done in dedicated departments and its success is measured by commonly used academic standards, such as impact of publications, not by its proven capability to change the efficacy of teaching. At ODL institutions, research was necessary to know what pedagogy to use and to measure how successful it was. 

All my scoops in June 2013 | Peter Sloep

As a service to my scoop.it followers and readers, a blog post of mine containing the publication date, title, author and source of my 16  scoops in June, 2013.

01-06-2013	A year of content curation with Scoop.it	Peter Sloep	Stories to TEL, blog
02-06-2013	The MOOC as Three Kinds of Learning Management System	Justin Reich	EdTech Researcher, blog
05-05-2013	MOOC as Courseware: Coursera’s Big Announcement in Context	Phil Hill	e-Literate
06-05-2013	MOOCs and Beyond - eLearning Papers 33 released		elearningeurope.info
07-06-2013	Personal learning environments' emerging as K-12 trend to watch	Katie Ash	Education Week
10-06-2013	The MOOC bubble and the attack on public education	Aaron Bady	Academic Matters
15-06-2013	MOOC' Provider Coursera Jumps Into K-12 and Teacher Ed.	Sean Cavanagh	Education Week
24-06-2013	MOOCs & Quality	Martin Weller	MOOC Quality Project
25-06-2013	MOOCs and Distance Education Institutions	Terry Anderson	Virtual Canuck, Teaching and Learning in a net-centric world, blog
25-06-2013	Pinterest: digital identity, Stepford Wives edition	Bonny Stewart	theory.cribchronicles.com, blog
26-06-2013	Will MOOCs help to democratise higher education?	Karen MacGregor	University World News
26-06-2013	Waypoints Part III: The Udacity-Georgia Tech Contract	Christopher Newfield	Remaking the University
27-06-2013	MOOCs, MIT and Magic	Tony Bates	online learning and distance education resources, blog
28-06-2013	Dynamic Learning Networks Expand Knowledge Sharing and Collaboration in Leading Companies	-	PRWEB
30-06-2013	Research publications on Massive Open Online Courses and Personal Learning Environments	Rita Kop - Welsh Cloggy	blog

A year of content curation with scoop.it

May 4th, 2012 I decided to collect and share interesting tidbits on networked learning and learning networks and use Scoop.it as my content curation conduit. A year and 379 posts later,  I have noticed that content curation with Scoop.it has taken an important place in my academic life.

As an academic, you want your work to be noticed by your fellow academics and, if at all possible, you want to hear their comments on it. Until not so long ago, speaking at conferences, writing conference papers, writing journal articles and writing book (chapters) were the sole tools with which to achieve that. However, nowadays the social web affords a much more fine-grained tool set. Thus I have explored such tools as Mendeley for sharing papers I find interesting (see my public Mendeley group on networked learning), Slideshare to share presentation, Research Gate and LinkedIn to maintain a public, professional profile; and I have of course engaged in macro (ordinary) blogging. and micro blogging (tweets). Rather than just broadcast my work, which is essentially one-way communication, using the social web has opened the gates for two-way communication. Put differently, it has allowed me to start building a my personal learning network (cf. Rajagopal et al., 201;, Rheinhardt, 2012). Content curation plays key part in this. Let me explain.

I have been using Twitter (username @pbsloep) for quite a while, since June 2008 and I have been blogging since well before then (2002, initially in Dutch only, later on in English in the present blog). Always, I've been using both to enrich my professional identity, as means to let the world know what I am thinking and doing an invite reactions to that. And whenever I wrote a new blogpost, I would send out a tweet about that. However, it always felt as if a piece was missing between macro and micro blogs. In my case, blogs tend to become rather long, certainly if I try to express new ideas but even if I comment on work of others. The reason is that often blogs are try-outs for full-fledged academic articles. Tweets on the other hand are short of necessity. They are ideally suited quickly to test the waters on a particular topic. Retweets are signs of approval, being ignored is at least a sign of not striking a chord with others. What I missed was something in the middle, that allowed me to comment on others, yet have more space than a tweet but not necessarily as much as a full-sized blog post; something which also would allow me to explore topics I grew an interest in without necessarily committing myself to pursuing it more deeply. Came along Scoop.it. which exactly fitted this bill.

I guess in part I am like any Scoop.it curator in that I want to 'scoop' pieces of content - a blog, diagram, picture, video or even just a tweet - and share that with others. The content that gets scooped falls within a particular overarching topic, has some novelty and is striking in some sense. The curator thus functions as an expert content filter. He or she does so, probably as a handy way to keep up to date on a particular topic, but also to maintain an online presence as a (budding) expert on the topic in question (cf Jeff Bullas). But over time I noticed merely collecting and sharing was not satisfactory to me. As a content curator I want to go beyond mere filtering and collecting, I want to explain why something is striking to me, to put it in the context of the Scoop.it topic on networked learning as a whole, and even to take an explicit stance on some issue or other. For academic topics such as mine voicing such an opinion probably adds much value.  Mark Carrigan has written about this more specific question of how Scoop.it can enhance academic practice; he compares Scoop.it with some other content curation tools. After a year of experience, with 379 blog posts and over 11000 visits, I will stick to doing this for some more time, I am sure.


References

• Rajagopal, K., Joosten – ten Brinke, D., Van Bruggen, J., & Sloep, P. B. (2012). Understanding Personal Learning Networks: their structure, content and the networking skills needed to optimally use them. FirstMonday, 16(1,2).
• Reinhardt, W. (2012). Awareness Support for Knowledge Workers in Research Networks. PhD thesis, Open Universiteit.