Who does what in a Massive Open Online Course? Comments on an article in the Communications of the ACM

In this blog post I look in some detail at an article* that analyses the behaviour of some 150,000 registrants for the inaugural edX course — 6.002x: Circuits and Electronics, which was offered in the spring of 2012. What makes the article interesting is that the analysis in it is based on the log files for the course, constituting an exemplary case of the application of learning analytics in action (although the authors don’t use that term at all). First, the authors take the data of all registrants into account, later to focus on those relatively few (about 10,000) who managed to earn a course certificate.

Not surprisingly, the vast majority of the registrants (76%) spent the fewest hours on the course (most of them 1 hour only), whereas a small minority of the registrants (7%) spent the most hours (most of them about 100) (fig. 2a in the article). This suggests that the registrants depart from the course at a constant rate, resulting in a negative exponential distribution of course participation durations (frequency versus total time spent in the course). This is consistent with what we know about MOOC drop-out behaviour.

The authors then focus on the final 7% that manage to stay in the course and earn a certificate. Their study behaviour they analyse in detail, in an effort to find out what works in their course and what less so. These results are of course difficult to generalise as they are specific to the course in question. Nevertheless, there are a few interesting points to note of a general nature. First, activity peaks in a weekly rhythm on weekends (fig. 3a). Second, few students access many resources, most only a few. However, there are marked differences between resources. The labwork and homework is carried out dutifully by the majority of the students (80% does almost all of it), videos and coursebook are consulted thoroughly by a minority only  (5% checks them all) , usage of tutorials  and lecture questions takes the middle ground (fig. 5a). This suggests that students are guided by the learning activities (lab and homework), using videos and coursebook in case of need. The importance of activities  to structure the learning is further supported by the students’ engagement  in discussions. This varies in step with the time spent on homework, to level off at about 1 hour per week (homework costs 1 to 3 hours weekly) around the mid-term exam. The importance of the discussion also emerges from the finding that, when doing homework, the most frequent next activity of a student is entering the discussion forum (fig 6a).

Overall, this is an interesting and useful study as my highlights hopefully evidence. I have two minor qualms with it, both concerning missed opportunities. First, the analysis focuses on those registrants who passed the exam and earned a certificate. Although the 10,000 students who managed to do this is a sizable number, it pales with the 150,000 who registred in the first place. Acknowledging the impossibility of turning them all in certificate earners,  it would have been interesting to know why they turned away from the course. Since this study focuses on log files only and the other 140,000 registrants out of their nature account for few logs only, the kind of analysis attempted here cannot shed light on this question. That is, other analyses using a different methodology are needed too.

Second, and as far as I am concerned more importantly, no attempts is made to frame the discussion in the context of a particular learning theory. Mastery learning is often cited (mainly by Coursera, I believe) as the underlying philosophy of these kinds of MOOCs. Do the data have anything to say about the viability of it as a learning theory for MOOCs? Perhaps the focus on lab and homework suggests so much (although one would have to know the exact nature  of it). However, the apparent importance of the forum discussions  in the course suggests that the social construction of knowledge plays an important role too. I am sure analysing the nature of the discourse would reveal what function the discussions have had. Such data are available, but require an entirely different approach then done by the authors.

I should emphasise that these qualms  do not detract from the value of this study, it deserves to be widely read, particularly by people who are engaged in learning analytics (who might miss it as that term is not used).

Reference
Seaton, D. T., Bergner, Y., Chuang, I., Mitros, P., & Pritchard, D. E. (2014). Who does what in a Massive Open Online Course? Communications of the ACM, 57(4), 58–65. Retrieved from http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2014/4/173221-who-does-what-in-a-massive-open-online-course/fulltext

All my scoops from August 2013 until February 2014| 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 scoops since July, 2013 (I have been lax, I know ...)

21-08-2013	The attack of the MOOCs	-	The Economist, Higher Education
27-08-2013	Money Models for MOOCs	Dellarocas & Van Alstyn	Communications of the ACM
15-09-2013	Learning in networks and in communities of practice	Peter Sloep	Stories to TEL
25-09-2013	MOOCs	Sharples, McAndrew, Weller et al	Innovating Pedagogy 2013
25-09-2013	20,000 students in the first 24 hours: UK enters MOOC space with social, mobile FutureLearn	ICEF	ICEF Monitor
30-09-2013	Copyright Challenges in a MOOC Environment	-	Educause Brief
15-10-2013	Recent reports and papers on MOOCs and Online education	-	ICDE
16-10-2013	Gallup Economy poll on online education	Lydia Saad, Brandon Busteed, Mitchell Ogisi	Gallup
06-02-2014	Completion Data For Moocs	Martin Weller & Katy Jordan	blog The Ed Techie
10-02-2014	Proceedings of the European MOOC Stakeholder Summit 2014	Ulrike Cress & Carlos Kloos Delgado	Online resource
11-02-2014	Five myths about MOOCs	Diana Laurillard	Times Higher Education
12-02-2014	European MOOCs Stakeholder Summit 2014 - EMOOCs 2014	Peter Sloep	blog post Stories to TEL
14-02-2014	University of London MOOC Report	Barney Grainger	U. of London research report

European MOOCs Stakeholder Summit 2014 - EMOOCs 2014

Today, the second European stakeholder summit on MOOCs - EMOOCs 2014 - ended. It lasted two days and a half days and was held at the Ecole Polytechnique Féderale de Lausanne, which is situated  on the shores of pretty Lac Léman, Switzerland. Reportedly, it was attended by 450 delegates, also from countries outside Europe. Apart from several keynotes, the conference featured four tracks of papers and panels. Two of the tracks were devoted to reporting on experiences with MOOCs and research on MOOCs, two others to discussing business models and policy decisions for MOOCs. Check out the conference site for the programme and the conference proceedings, or search in your Twitter client with #emoocs2014 to acquire a taste of the conference's convivial atmosphere.

I went there for two reasons. First out of my general interest in MOOCs: I've blogged here about MOOCs before and maintain a scoop.it site on them. I wanted to sample current ideas and opinions, and check progress. The second reason was more practical. In the context of the EU-funded HANDSON project we intend to offer a course in the form of a MOOC to teachers in Europe. The course wants to help them to improve their ICT skills. How do our ideas fit with what is on offer elsewhere, I wanted to find out.

That second question is fairly easy to answer. The variety and diversity of courses that go by the name of MOOCs, or the various variations on this acronym, is enormous. So almost any course that lives online, partially or fully, can go by the name of a MOOC, the HANDSON course being no exception to that. How about the first point?

Undeniably, MOOCs have lighted a fire that will not be extinguished anytime soon. This much became clear. Whatever their motives - not wanting to miss the boat, making a profit, branding themselves, helping out developing nations - universities an companies have become very active, also collaborating intensely. This is the case with the oldest players such as Coursera but also with the newer ones such as MiríadaX, which focuses on the Ibero-American world. It can't be wrong that people invest in education, financially or with mind power, so this development is to be applauded. Or is it indeed?

A 2003 book by Todd Oppenheimer comes to mind: The Flickering Mind, the false promise of technology in the classroom and how learning can be saved. Omitting all nuance and detail, Oppenheimer documents with great care how the computer industry flooded many primary and secondary schools in the the US in the eighties and nineties with computers. Although they may well have done so with the best of intentions, at best positive learning effects could not be detected, at worst they were negative indeed. This could happen also because schools seem to have been blinded by the available money and forgot their prime raison d'être, making sure that children learn. MOOCs are not hardware and universities are not schools. Still, venture capital and industries buy influence through the money they make available.

So amidst all the genuine hopes and contagious enthusiasm, some scepticism wouldn't harm lest we repeat the mistake made in the past to confuse financial affluence with educational desirability. The urge to spend money now that it is available should be tempered by the sense to consult available  research results - MOOCs may profit from  30 years of research in distance education and at least 10 years of research on networked learning. Nor should one lightly brush aside genuine concerns about student privacy, intellectual property rights, and intellectual imperialism vis a vis developing countries. In all fairness, these latter topics all were addressed in the conference's policy and business tracks. However, no solutions to these concerns seemed to be forthcoming. Perhaps they will in next year's conference, to be held in Mons, Belgium.

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.