Massive Open Online Change? Exploring the Discursive Construction of the ‘MOOC’ in Newspapers

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been a prominent topic of recent educational discussion and debate. MOOCs are, in essence, university‐affiliated courses offered to large groups of online learners for little or no cost and are seen by many as a bellwether for change and reform across higher education systems. This study uses content and discourse analysis methods to examine how understandings of MOOC‐related ‘change’ were presented in US, UK and Australian newspapers. Drawing on detailed analysis of 457 newspaper articles published between 2011 and 2013, the findings point to a predominant portrayal of MOOCs in relation to the massification, marketization and monetization of higher education, rather than engaging in debate of either ‘technological’ or ‘educational’ issues such as online learning and pedagogy, instructional design or student experience. The article then considers the reasons underpinning this restricted framing of what many commentators have touted as a radical educational form—not least the apparently close association between MOOCs and the economics of higher education.     

Implications of massive open online courses for higher education: mitigating or reifying educational inequities?

The proliferation of massive open online courses (MOOCs) has stirred a fervent debate about global access to higher education. While some commentators praise MOOCs for expanding educational opportunities in a more open and accessible fashion, others criticize this trend as a threat to current models of higher education and a low-quality substitute for traditional learning. Drawing on a comprehensive literature review of both academic and popular media sources, this article will explore the impact of MOOCs on the field of higher education, with a particular emphasis on their promise to enhance educational opportunities worldwide. Specifically, the analysis will focus on the four issues that have – so far – proven to be most significant in shaping the future of MOOC as an equalizing force in higher education: credit, pedagogy, internationalization, and, finally, legal and financial aspects.     

How MOOC instructors view the pedagogy and purposes of massive open online courses

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have proliferated in recent years despite disagreement about the role of MOOCs in higher education and whether student outcomes are satisfactory. Taking a mixed-methods approach, the current study surveys professors who have taught MOOCs (n = 162) in order to better understand how MOOCs are perceived by instructors. Professors’ backgrounds and beliefs about the role of MOOCs in higher education and their perceptions of the experiences of students are discussed. In addition, professors’ satisfaction in teaching MOOCs is reported. The study finds that most MOOC professors are experienced faculty members with relatively little prior experience teaching online, and that they are divided about the purpose of MOOCs in the institutional landscape of higher education.     

回归课程本质：大学在线课程的质量管理

随着慕课回归大学,大学在线课程迅速发展。由于教学对象不同,慕课与大学在线课程的质量目标产生差异———前者需满足消费者需求,而后者则以促进学生发展、实现学校人才培养目标为质量目标。文章从课程本质出发,阐述大学在线课程作为学校课程体系的重要组成,必须有明确目标和有效组织的教学活动。高校应强化管理,通过制定质量标准、对关键质量控制点实施保障和开展审核与评价等举措,确保大学在线课程质量和人才培养质量。     

Contemporary Learning Environments: Designing e-Learning for Education in the Professions

Designing e-learning environments for quality professional education is a challenge for education designers, as the continuing practice of simply moving courses online can be surprisingly disabling. We argue that as universities strive to educate for excellence in professional practice, design approaches for the e-learning components must be conceptualized in a broader view of a contemporary learning environment involving integrated virtual and physical dimensions. These are comprehensively considered in an integrated way to facilitate learning experiences providing an emphasis on grounded practice. Our paper considers learning environments in the service of a broader understanding of a professional "practicum." In providing the more flexible, immediate and evolving virtual experiences, e-learning as a feature must take account of a range of education design considerations we model in a framework of elements. These are outlined, and broader issues are illuminated through a comparative case analysis of educational technology developments at Deakin University in the two professional fields of teaching and journalism. The Education Studies Online (ESO) project and the HOTcopy newsroom simulation project exemplify elements of the approach recommended in addressing the challenges of quality professional education. We highlight the generative role of the education designer in adopting an integrative and strategic stance, when creating such environments. Implications for the selection and use of various e-learning resources and corporate e-learning systems become evident as we highlight the dangers of a returning "instructional industrialism" as we risk allowing courses to "move online", rather than moving towards proposed features of contemporary learning environments.     

Exploring the position of curriculum studies across the continuum of teacher education in Ireland

Curriculum, while often narrowly defined, is a contested space that stimulates continuing international debate, yet the importance of curriculum studies is frequently overlooked across the continuum of teacher education. Within the Irish context a technicist interpretation of curriculum studies, focusing primarily of subject knowledge and development, has historically been adopted. More recent Teaching Council of Ireland policy documents have espoused a broader macro understanding of curriculum studies as a foundation discipline within initial teacher education. However, concerns have been raised regarding student teachers’ ability to fully engage with such material so early in their professional development. With the recently embraced continuum of teacher education in Ireland, this paper examines how curriculum studies is currently defined by Irish policy and problematises how it is addressed in practice. The paper proceeds to explore emerging opportunities to expand this area of study across the continuum. A case for the place of curriculum studies as central to the advancement of the profession through the promotion of teachers as change agents is presented.     

Reimagining student employability: a case study of policy and practice transformation

ABSTRACT

Within Australian higher education, there has been an evolving of employability policy, realised in curriculum, at an intersection of the constructs of employment, work-readiness, life-long learning, and career development. The enactment of employability policy has driven an evolution in the practices of higher education in both curriculum and student support. This paper presents a case study of an Australian university which has reimagined the delivery of career and student support services through a framework that envisions preparing students for future worlds of work. The emergent policy framework has transformed organisational structures, human resources, and connections between student support practices and curriculum design. This transformation has generated new intersections of practice and is challenging institutional constructs of expertise. This case study provides transferrable learnings for broader considerations of higher education policy and practice as employability becomes the core driver of student success, and explores layered discourses of policymaking across an institution.     

Fixing higher education through technology: Canadian media coverage of massive open online courses

The popularization of massive open online courses (MOOCs) has been shrouded in promises of disruption and radical change in education. In Canada, official partnerships struck by higher education institutions with platform providers such as Coursera, Udacity and edX were publicized by dailies and professional magazines. This print coverage of MOOCs captures the contemporary ideological struggle over the meaning of both technology and higher education. By means of a thematic analysis of the English Canadian print coverage of MOOCs (2012–2014), this paper shows that both online educational technologies and higher education are constructed through an economic frame. However, this frame does not go unchallenged. Where newspapers construct MOOCs as an easy fix for an allegedly inefficient and outdated higher education system, professional magazines question the relationship between technology, higher education and money. These different representations point to the efforts of academic communities to develop alternative social imaginaries of education as public good within a dominant neoliberal framing of MOOCs and of the higher education system. In conclusion, the paper reflects on how the academic community can create alternative discursive spaces by shifting the discussion of MOOCs from economic concerns to civic goals.     

基于MOOCs的教育教学改革

现代信息技术发展催生了MOOCs这一新的学习和教育模式。文章阐述了MOOCs具有在线学习、在线测验与短视频、相互间评价与自我评价、在线论坛与视频讨论等不同于传统教育教学的特征,指出了MOOCs对中国高等教育的特殊意义:它为中国高水平大学之间课程资源优势互补与共享以及向其他大学开放提供了绝好的机会。文章还分析了如何基于MOOCs实施教育教学改革、提高校园教育质量以及实现优质教学资源共享。     

The MOOC and the Multitude

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) take university lectures and other educational materials and make them available for free as online “courses.” Liberal and neoliberal MOOC supporters laud these courses for opening up education to the world while incorporating market dynamics to improve quality and drive down costs. Skeptics claim MOOCs are a bald attempt to privatize higher learning, thus creating an apartheid educational system with traditional universities serving the wealthy while everyone else is left with cut‐rate online learning. This essay draws on the political theory of autonomist Marxism, arguing that MOOCs are capital's defensive reaction to the threats of resistant universities on one side, and unmanageable Internet‐based learning on the other. It then looks at which MOOC designs would support education for the “multitude,” which is the term used by autonomist Marxism to describe an autonomous, diverse, networked political body.     

Older adults’ learning motivations in massive open online courses

With the popularization of massive open online courses (MOOCs) in the e-learning landscape, more and more older adults are participating in MOOC learning activities. Understanding older adults’ learning motivations in MOOCs will help MOOC developers design suitable learning systems and appropriate course content for older learners. Using a content analysis method, this study identifies six types of learning motivations of older adults in MOOCs: solving problems, acquiring knowledge, improving cognition, seeking fun, benefiting others, and social contact, among which improving cognition is unique to older adults. Based on the above classification, we found that the learning motivations among older adults vary with age and gender. The findings enrich the theories of education for older adults and of learning motivation, and can be used to improve the design of MOOCs for older adults.     

Past/forward policy-making: transforming Chinese engineering education since the Reform and Opening-up

Although engineering education has played important roles in China’s growing power and influence on the world stage, engineering education policy since the Reform and Opening-up in the late 1970s has not been well documented in current English-language scholarship. Informed by historical and sociological studies of education, engineering and engineering education, this paper attempts to address this scholarly gap by relating contemporary Chinese engineering education policy-making to its broader historical, cultural and ideological contexts. Based on analysis of policy documents and reports released by the Chinese government and engineering schools, and drawing on prior scholarship of Chinese (engineering) education policy, this paper employs the concept of ‘past/forward’ as an analytic lens to interpret and understand four major areas of engineering education policy change in contemporary China: institutional reform, disciplines and majors, training objectives, and curriculum reform.     

MOOCs与SPOCs：在线课程发展的不同路径与共同问题

MOOCs掀起了一场世界范围的教育技术海啸。然而,MOOCs也给教育界带来至少三个方面的压力,即阻碍提高个性化教学质量目标的实现、阻碍技术本身内在教育价值的实现、影响大学教育的本质功能等．SPOCs是小型的、私人的、在线的课程,可以说在一定程度上改善和重塑MOOCs效果,并受到了哈佛大学等众多知名大学的大力支持。对MOOCs与SPOCs从课程规模、课程开放程度、课程收费、机构盈利、商业模式、课程要素、学分认证、证书获取等方面进行比较,可以发现SPOCs在提高个性化质量、提供优质和可持续的课程、实现技术内在教育价值、提供完整在线课程等方面具有优势。MOOCs与SPOCs发展也面临共同的问题与质疑,比如,传统课堂中诸如小组讨论和教师面对面交流等种种因素会导致MOOCs的失败：MOOCs转移了教师提高学校教育质量的注意力;M00Cs将会减少教师的数目和教学方法的多样性等。     

The supposed demise of Fordism: Implications for distance education and higher education

The recent shift in Australian Government policy for Distance Education at the Higher Education level, as intimated by the increasing usage of the notion, Open Learning, is outlined. Such an emphasis on Open Learning contrasts markedly with the concerted effort to centralise and rationalise distance education in the late 1980s. This shift is related to a more general debate concerning the restructuring of industry which is formulated using an analysis grounded in the conceptualisation of Fordism, its crisis and its likely successor. The complex and contested nature of the debate about Fordism is revealed, as is its important connection with postmodernism. The relevance of this broader debate to higher education is then displayed and linked to the particular place of academic staff and their opportunity and ability to influence future policy.     

More than access: MOOCs and changes in Chinese higher education

ABSTRACT

This paper presents an analysis of the conceptualization of massive open online courses (MOOCs) by major influencers in Chinese higher education. Using critical discourse analysis, predominantly from university resources, a map of the discursive construction of MOOCs is presented and interpreted. The centralized orientation of decision making in Chinese higher education is reflected in how MOOCs have been introduced, envisioned, and utilized in China. With the increase of Chinese MOOCs, elite universities are able to capitalize on their comparative advantages, which may be counter to the true intent of MOOCs, which is to raise teaching standards across sectors. This paper serves to illuminate how MOOCs may reinforce the status of elite universities, thereby having the opposite effect to their real intention of democratizing higher education for the masses. The strategy of using MOOCs to improve teaching quality and augment the worldwide reputation of Chinese institutions is central to China’s reinvigorated focus on higher education, which counters the widely held perception, and intention, that MOOCs are vehicles for widening access.     

Exploring the ethical implications of MOOCs

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) represent a potentially exciting opportunity to use technology to realise many of the long-promised benefits of universal higher education. While there are many positive aspects to the MOOCs on offer and in development, there are also significant ethical concerns arising from various initiatives. These include the academic duties of care and integrity, commercial exploitation of learners, as well as research ethics concerns arising from the analytical and other work being done by academics and institutions. These issues are explored and a set of heuristics for individuals and institutions provided as a starting point for ethical analysis of MOOCs and associated activities.     

MOOCs来了，开放大学如何积极应对

MOOCs大规模开放网络课程是远程教育近年来出现的新型课程模式。该课程模式具有开放、大规模、在线和免费的特点,它给高等学校特别是开放大学带来了极大震撼。本文分析了MOOCs的形成发展与优势,及其对高等学校和开放大学的影响,并依据开放大学的历史使命,提出了开放大学应对MOOCs挑战的措施。     

Skills for sale: what is being commodified in higher education?

‘Commodification’ is a sociological term that has become widely adopted as part of the higher education lexicon. It has been argued that an increased emphasis on the commercial relevance of university courses is anathema to the values of the academy, resulting from the widespread adoption of neo‐liberal policies towards education. This article will discuss the use of the word commodification in this context, with particular emphasis on its economic roots. It will identify three models of commodification derived from the literature and use these to attempt an understanding of what it is that universities are selling. Finally, the article will examine the use of the term commodification within the broader debate about the purpose of higher education.     

国外优质大学在线课程运营与特征研究——基于edX平台的MOOCs课程分析

在线课程作为高校优质资源共享的途径,已经和传统课堂教育一起成为教育的主要形式之一,发挥着重要作用。大规模在线开放课程（MOOCs）近两年来快速发展,影响和改变着在线教育的生态。edX作为美国最重要的MOOCs平台之一,其理念与开放资源运动一脉相承,在平台运营中坚持优质资源传播和非盈利的理念,课程建设中体现了视频与非视频资源并重,以交互测试、学生互评、社交软件应用等多种方式支持教学的特征,这些特征对我国开展在线教育具有很好的启示。     

Accountable for what and to whom? Changing representations and new legitimation discourses among teachers under increased external control

This article discusses how teachers construct new representations about accountability and professionalism in the context of increased external control. Over the last decade in particular, concerns about the quality of schooling and the quality of teachers has been raised by both politicians and the public alike, while prominent policy responses have seen an increased emphasis on student performance and the external control of professional work. Based on a 1 year long fieldwork in a Norwegian municipality, the findings imply how forms of external accountability are accepted by many teachers as a necessary and desirable development, but also one that is resisted as the policies are seen to downplay the broader aims of education. In this tension of external and internal accountability, however, alternative discourses have developed. In particular, an emphasis on scientific knowledge and research-informed practice becomes an important representation for enhancing professional legitimacy and trust. By opening up the concept of accountability, it is possible to investigate how teachers’ representations of being accountable may take new forms when teacher professionalism is reconstructed in policy.