Who Isn't It Working For?
4 min read
Cole Camplese has a piece on pushback against MOOCs over on his blog. In it, he asks:
(N)ow that the MOOC thing has happened the same people who built rallying calls for more open access to learning are now rejecting this movement. Why? Because it is driven by corporations trying to make money? Because it isn’t really open? Because the press isn’t giving a few people the credit they believe they deserve? Because these aren’t really courses? Ok … that sounds like the same stuff we’ve always dealt with.
The hype around MOOCs is identical to things we have been dealing with for a while. EdTech and Higher Ed have a bad habit of looking for a messiah. Remember when Second Life revolutionized education? Before that, remember when the "free" web made charging for things obsolete? Good times.
He then answers his question:
Yes, the way the current MOOC landscape is shaking out has little to do with real honest to goodness open access. MOOCs are still closed in that you have to take the time to actually enroll in a “course†and take it over a period of time. I guess the true open crowd would prefer that everything just live on the Internet within “open†spaces like youtube and blogs. The reality of that is that it didn’t work and won’t for quite some time.
That last line - "reality of that is that it didn’t work and won’t for quite some time" - bears greater attention. Who didn't it work for? People have been learning in the open for years. Open source communities build amazing things, and have complex communication, and solve difficult problems, in the open. The people who took the original MOOCs learned things. People participating in ds106 are learning things. So, when we say that something isn't working, it's imperative to ask who it isn't working for.
And there is an excellent point to be made that the early MOOCs, and informal learning in general, didn't and don't work for people who need a degree or a certificate or some other formal proof of learning as a step on the path toward greater social and economic mobility. However, the limited information we have about who is taking the platform-based MOOCs shows that these implementations are really serving those who already have ready access to jobs and higher education - in other words, the platform-based MOOCs are slanted heavily toward the "haves".
Looking at it from this perspective, it seems like the early MOOCs served learners well, but didn't serve the organizations accrediting learning very effectively. The learning process within the original MOOCs was learner-centered, sprawling, and messy, and that takes time to certify. If we had to look at what "didn't work" and for whom, there's a good case to be made that MOOCs worked better for learners than for institutions; this is the "problem" that I see the platform-based MOOCs attempting to solve.
Cole ends his piece with a call for reflection:
I want all my ed tech friends to chill out. To enjoy the fact that this is progress. That this isn’t selling out. That this is a step in the right direction. That this has the attention of faculty, administrators, and boards of trustees. That without that attention, this moment wouldn’t be happening. That our job isn’t to bash the movement but to do what we have always done — move it in the right direction using positive energy.
What is currently happening with MOOCs is not selling out, at least not by the people who developed the concept. The platform-based MOOCs certainly co-opted an idea, and are using it as they see fit. That is their prerogative, but I'm not sure that passes as progress. Undoubtedly, MOOCs have increased talk around the benefit of open learning, but equating the platform-based MOOCs with open learning is comparable to saying that you went on a wildlife tour after going to the zoo. The point of MOOCs - in any flavor - is to help more people learn more effectively, and get the benefit they want from the process of learning and the knowledge gained from that process. If something advances that needle, awesome. If it doesn't, then it's okay to point that out. I'm glad that better conversations are occurring. But, within the space of those conversations, it's okay to point out how things could be better, or when logical inconsistencies are being applied at scale (also known as marketing). If that critique is part of what informs additional work and learning, that is positive energy.
