MOOCS: Revolutionizing Education or the Latest Business Opportunity ?
Shirley L. Young
Are Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) the next revolution in education or just another business opportunity leading to the further price-scaling of knowledge and disenfranchisement of those already disadvantaged? It should be noted that the literature on this currently topical and very new phenomenon is restricted to mostly media reportage, evaluation and recommendation reports by both companies and government, and commentary by others with a vested interest in the field of education.
MOOCs are a form of education offered through the virtual world of the internet and are the current trend in the world of tertiary education. Early examples began appearing from 2008 and whilst still very much a work-in-progress, they are garnering a lot of media attention, significant interest from tertiary institutions as well as venture capitalists that see them as a business opportunity to be exploited.
(Yuan & Powell, 2013) Their advocates claim they will revolutionize education,
lesser enthusiasts view them as a development in technology rather than in any
significant way impacting on the nature of education, and the detractors have
concerns about their potential to be exploitive and further separate the “haves” from
the “have nots”.
Online learning per se
1is nothing new in education. Its antecedents can be traced back 100 years to distance learning by correspondence, followed by computer technology and the internet where an ever greater array of modalities has developed to allow for synchronous and asynchronous online interactions in the transference of knowledge. ("Evaluation of evidence-based," 2010) In 2005, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reported in a policy brief that in 2004 of 122 Commonwealth institutions responding to a survey only 9%
had no institution-wide online learning strategy or plans to develop one. However they noted that at that time, the majority of e-learning was used to supplement in- class courses. ("E-learning in tertiary," 2005) The tertiary sector had embraced the opportunities of internet technology and the rapidly expanding user-base that had access to it and the skill to use it. It is worth noting that a concurrent phenomenon was the rise of the notion of “life-long learning” and the mature age student.
What distinguishes MOOCs from their more common predecessors are their numbers, hence the “massive” of the title. There are courses being offered that have up to 100,000 students enrolled. Additionally they are “open”, meaning that they are free for anyone to participate in irrespective of geographic, economic or social boundaries - for the moment at least. They are also “open” in the sense that work and materials are shared and, in some cases, this extends to assessment with the use of peer evaluation. (Funnell, Davies & Smith, 2013).
What is astonishing is the speed and numbers with which students have begun
1 In a paper commissioned by the U.S. Education department, “online learning” was defined as
“…learning that takes place partially or entirely over the Internet … excludes purely print-based correspondence education, broadcast television or radio, videoconferencing, videocassettes, and stand-alone educational software programs that do not have a significant Internet-based instructional component.
to participate in and respond to MOOCs, suggesting a serious gap in the education
“market” that has been waiting to be filled. The “how” it is being filled is as important as the question “what with?”. Leading the technology platforms for MOOCs are privately funded internet startup businesses such as Coursera and Udacity, as well as the not-for-profit edX. One of the co-founders of Coursera, Professor Daphne Koller of Stanford University, says she is surprised at the pace of enrollments for courses. When interviewed on Future Tense in April 2013 she told presenter Antony Funnell that :
We had three million students today, as it happens. This is less than a year after we launched in April 2012. I think that's a remarkable growth rate, it's faster than most internet start-ups. I think it really speaks to the hunger for high quality education that exists around the world.
Clearly for those that have access to the Internet and a satisfactory level of computer literacy, there is a market for such free online courses. And that market is potentially huge.
MOOC platform providers are seeing rapid numbers of registration in a short period of time. Coursera, after just more than twelve months from launching, boasts over three million registered participants, offers over 300 courses from 16 different countries, including such schools as Princeton, Stanford, Yale and Johns Hopkins.
(Coursera) These figures are as of June 2013 but numbers for participants of both students and schools are increasing daily. Udacity too was founded by professors from Stanford University wanting to offer free education to a wider audience and provides a range of hard science courses as well as business. ("Udacity: Learn.
think.do ," 2013) They have about 112,000 active students and instructors, part
of the total of 739,000 registrants. ("Part 1: Mooc," 2013) In addition, edX was
created by founding partners Harvard and MIT and currently offers 63 courses from
28 universities including: Massechusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard, Berkeley, McGill and Kyouto universities. ("edx: Take great," 2013) They have around 675,000 users. ("Part 1: Mooc," 2013) It would appear then that study in the virtual world, at least when courses are free, is appealing to a vast number of people.
Whether that will translate to a desire for paid services, and whom this would be an option for and whom it would exclude, is another question. The increasing enrolments in regular online courses indicate that there would be no shortage of people willing to invest in their education with paid services.
So how would you go about enrolling in a MOOC and what could you expect? At present, there are a number of types of providers that host the technological platform for the interface between institutions or professors giving courses, and learners receiving them. On the Coursera website for example, it takes less than a minute to create an account, agree to the terms and conditions as well as an “honor” agreement, browse the 389 course choices and sign up for your desired selection. There is a diverse range of subject choices offered over varying lengths of time. For instance there are thirty-three courses listed under the Business and Management category, ranging from 5 to 10 weeks in length and thirty-five courses in Teacher Professional Development averaging 5 – 6 weeks. So there are, at present, no geographic, economic or social impediments to participating in courses and enrollment is both fast and easy.
Coursera is a privately funded internet startup company that hosts courses
from over 60 universities, including some of world renown such as Stanford,
Princeton, Yale and Johns Hopkins. Classes include watching lectures by world-
class professors, learning at your own pace and testing knowledge and reinforcing
concepts through interactive exercises. Coursera argues that the platform for courses
that they have developed is based on sound pedagogical research and utilizes a range
of methodologies including: mastery learning (Bloom, 1984) and peer assessment, both consistent with the notion of active learning as an effective means for improving student engagement, attendance and higher test scores. Coursera opines that they are moving “ … traditional lecturing - required for conveying the necessary material - from inside to outside the classroom, in an online learning format that is, in many ways, more interactive and more engaging.”
Most people weighing in on the MOOC debate, be they gainsayer or proponent, see MOOCs as complementary to learning in physical institutions and not a replacement for it. As works-in-progress, what is unknown is how this new technology might progress and what will be the long-term outcome and effects.
To fully understand how MOOCs may affect the current education paradigm, it is necessary to see them in the context of their historical precedents. This includes what education is, its purpose and how it has evolved. It was but a mere 500 years ago that reading was considered a “God” given talent that could not be learned but that one was born with, and yet we now consider literacy a human right. (Spender, 1995) Prior to the advent of the printing press after which information could be printed and distributed en masse, knowledge was transferred and maintained through skills such as song, story telling and drama. Travelling troupes would “carry” this education from town to town and sing or dramatize long sagas of historical events or with a moral message. Memorization was well-developed, a skill much lost to us now. Nonetheless much of this shared knowledge had a short shelf life or changed profoundly over the long term in its many retellings.
Developments in technology have changed not only what knowledge can be stored
but have also profoundly extended the capacity for storage. A drawing is subject
to greater subjective interpretation than a photograph, but that too is subject to the
photographer’s interpretation of an event. Video gives greater context to pictures and
with it a more objective interpretation. With the new multi-media MOOC platform, we are again changing the nature of what we can view and how we can extend the sources to interpret information.
Colonial countries following the British system had free tertiary education until relatively recently whereas America began with private fee-paying universities in addition to those publically funded. As many of those countries have moved from industrial manufacturing based economies to more service-based economies, the marketing and “commodifying” of education has been an important revenue earner for tertiary institutions suffering from government cutbacks and declining enrolments due to falling birth rates. In addition countries with aging populations - where people are living longer, are retired from the workforce and have both financial means and time on their hands, are finding a new and largely untapped source of participatory learners.
Another trend has been the changing function of universities as a place for the pure pursuit of knowledge to a training ground for future employment. Australia is illustrative of this trend as the Department of Education in the 1960’s slowly became melded with portfolios of Labour, Employment and later Science. As of 2013 it is the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations in 2013.
This marrying of education with jobs was also reflected in the changing university curricula as well as an amalgamation of universities with other tertiary institutions in the late 1980’s and early ’90s resulting in greater numbers of universities and other higher tertiary institutions offering degree and post-graduate degree courses.
The student demographic has also undergone significant change in developed
English-speaking countries. Traditionally students graduated from high school
and went on to tertiary education and from there to full-time, and often life-long,
employment. Profound changes in the economic climate of many industrialized
countries, moving from manufacturing to more service centred industries, has resulted in a changed workforce. Lifetime employment with a single company or just a few job changes within the same industry are much less the norm than they were for much of the 20th century. Job losses due to “outsourcing” to other countries, particularly in the field of manufacturing and more recently in the area of information technology (IT) skills left many people needing to retrain or gain new qualifications for a different job market. Mature age students became a significant consideration for tertiary level study, and as most of them were in the workforce or bound to other adult responsibilities such as child-rearing, universities had to adapt. This coincided with the establishment and growth of online courses for both domestic and international consumption. Education became a marketable commodity and English-speaking countries in particular began to aggressively pursue international students wanting to get an internationally recognized accreditation or develop English-speaking skills for business purposes.
Hence the student demographic changed from predominantly domestic high school graduates to a mix of domestic students of all ages, as well as an increasing number of international students. The increase in mature age students and the relatively recent concept of lifelong learning is seeing a vast increase in students with both family and work responsibilities. Traditional day-time attendance to a physical location is often not a feasible option for these learners.
Proponents of MOOCs claim that they will change the face of education in a
system that has remained more or less unchanged for the past 350 years. Professor
Koller of Stanford University, and a co-founder of Coursera, believes that MOOCs
will transform the nature of education such that a student in 10 years time will not
be taught in the same way that most of us have up to now: essentially as recipients
of knowledge to be lectured to rather than actively participate in a transference of
knowledge. (Funnell, Davies & Smith, 2013) In their current state where courses are free and open to anyone irrespective of age, gender, ethnicity, physical abilities, cultural or social boundaries the argument is that they will democratize education in a way that has not been possible before. The opportunity for diversity of perspective and the exchange and sharing of ideas is unparalleled. The young may seek to pursue subjects and skills that will enhance job opportunities, or those in mid-career wanting to retrain for another career can do so in a way that will not negatively impact on full-time employment. Those who have been out of the workforce for some time and wish to upgrade or refresh qualifications can do so more easily. Older people or those less driven by demands for employment-oriented fields of study will be able to pursue personal or more esoteric interests not germane to their occupation.
A MOOC enthusiast, Al Filreis, Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, says that his experience teaching a MOOC poetry course has been one of his favourite in thirty years of teaching due to:
… the range of people who were involved in the course. A lot of elderly people, a lot of disabled people. Among the disabled people were some folks who described themselves as not having been able to get access to any sort of traditional or standard kind of education, either because they were told they couldn't do it or because the facilities didn't enable it. (Funnell, Davies &
Smith, 2013)
Filreis is excited by the technology and believes that it offers more than the
traditional forms of education. His positive experience is encouraging in view of
the general assumption that MOOCS lend themselves more to the sciences than
the humanities subjects. He makes significant use of peer assessment in evaluating
students and claims this is superior to the usual university experience where a student
only gets feedback from one person, usually the professor or teaching assistant.
Conversely in his course, students are randomly assigned four essays to review using a rubric designed by him. Filreis argues that this is just an extension of the well-established practice of peer review amongst graduate students, academics and researchers. (Funnell, Davies & Smith, 2013) Again, advocates cite this exposure to a greater diversity of evaluation perspectives as a benefit unique to MOOCs.
It is not difficult to see the potential for MOOCs as an opportunity for greater equality in the transference of knowledge and global exchange. The rhetoric of altruism and global-wide opportunities is inspiring but is it realistic? The trend in Western education
2for the past several decades has been toward user-pay services and the “marketing” of education and knowledge as a product. Whilst most MOOC courses are being offered free at the moment such things as “premium services”, where students pay for additional provisions or earn credit for courses equal to that of traditional courses taught by the professor, are already being included in provider options. In addition, whilst the courses themselves may be offered for free, at a minimum it is necessary for would-be users to have access to a computer, a reliable internet connection and a functional degree of computer literacy if they wish to avail themselves of the courses – free or otherwise.
This last is significant given the statistics on Internet users within the world population and further still when broken down by region. As of June 2012, Internet World Stats has the world Internet User Penetration
3(IUP) rate at 34% of the total population. Asia had the greatest number of Internet users at 1076.7 million with the
2 This is true for both countries with a history of fee paying, such as the United States, and those with a history of free tertiary education, such as Britain, Australia and Canada.
3 Internet World Stats defines “Internet Penetration Rate” as the percentage of the total population of a given country or region that uses the Internet.
