by Tulpesh Patel, EAP
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been described as ‘tsunamis’,
‘avalanches’, ‘a battle of bricks and mortar versus fiber optics’, and ‘the end
of universities as we know them’, but for others, MOOCs are just an incremental
evolution of the distance learning models that have existed for decades.
MOOCs have appeared at a time when the pressures on traditional
classroom models are mounting: the price versus the value of a formal
education, high expectations of quality and content, the depth and immediacy of
high-quality academic material available on the internet and technological
device ownership are all placing increasing strains on the Higher Education
sector and presenting challenges – and opportunities – in unprecedented ways.
Meeting these challenges doesn’t necessitate the end of universities but it
does require that universities brace themselves for profound change.
Despite their apparent ubiquity, making sense of MOOCs isn’t
actually that easy, with contestable and rapidly changing definitions of what
exactly it means to be massive, open, online and a course. The meaning of every
letter in MOOC is negotiable; institutions, platform providers and students
each have their own focus, motivations and needs.
On October 10th 2013, the Academic Cooperation
Association (ACA) and
the European Universities
Association (EUA) brought
together speakers from Higher Education institutions across Europe and the US
and MOOC developers for a one-day seminar called Making
Sense of MOOCs. What
follows is both a report from seminar and a reflection on some of the topics
discussed during the day’s talks, which focused on the impact of MOOCs on the
Higher Education sector, US-led MOOC platforms like Coursera and the European
response to them, and the search for viable MOOC business models.
The seminar organisers have made the presentations
available in full on the ACA webpage.
Massive: Is bigger always better?
The ’massive’ part of MOOCs is related to scalability and
reach. The largest MOOC platforms, like Coursera and EdX, have hundreds of
thousands of students enrolled in individual courses. Despite substantial
drop-out rates, the raw numbers left that complete a course are not inconsiderable.
At the other end of the scale we have MOOC-style courses set up by European
institutions collaborating with African countries, where around 50 students are
enrolled on entry-level courses like C++ programming, a figure that still
counts as massive relative to the target population. Just how massive MOOCs
want to be and are capable of being was an important topic of discussion over
the course of the day, particularly with relation to viable business models and
how MOOCs fit into individual institutions’ longer-term strategies. Scalability
is an important part of MOOCs, particularly in terms of financing, but as an
aim in and of itself it may be flawed: as diverse and specific courses and
platforms proliferate, target groups may well becoming smaller and more
specialised.
Open: But to what extent?
The ‘openness’ of MOOCs can be judged by many different
criteria, and the value and extent of it a matter of considerable debate. For
many, the ‘openness’ of MOOCs is about accessibility: theoretically, anyone,
regardless of their background or income, can get a MOOC education for free, as
long as they have access to a decent device (PC/tablet/smartphone) and internet
connection. However, the statistics presented by Tim Gore of the University of
London at the ACA-EUA seminar, and others throughout the day, show that the
average MOOC user is 30 years old, employed, and likely to already have at
least a Bachelor’s degree. In terms of geography, 21% of MOOC participants are
from the US, 10% from the UK and 6% are from India. As Michael Gaebel of the
European University Association put it, “education spreads where education
already exists.”
For the time being MOOC participation appears to be
largely limited to those who are already able to access a traditional university
education, but the statistics don’t present the whole picture. It can be argued
that it’s in the outliers where much of the interesting stuff is happening.
Karl Aberer of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale De Lausanne’s Center for
Digital Education described their collaborative projects in French-speaking
African countries where widening participation was very much in evidence. In
addition, newer platforms, like Kepler Kigali
are combining globally networked universities and face-to-face local seminars
to provide cheap, accessible skills and work-based education to students in
developing countries, starting initially in Rwanda. With the massive
one-size-fits-all MOOCs like Coursera, there is uncertainty about whether and
under what conditions successful participation can extend beyond those with
broadband access and social networking skills; Openness may come actually
manifest in initiatives adapted to smaller, more local environments and needs.
There is also the tension between the commodification of
content and the push for the availability of open education resources, both of
which are driving developments whilst simultaneously presenting considerable
challenges. For the for-profit platforms, such as Coursera, copyright
educational exemptions don’t apply. Instead, instructors are encouraged to
develop their own materials and these may not be freely available to use by
others. It is partially in response to these established, proprietary US
platforms that the OpenupEd project has been developed. Fred
Mulder, Chair of the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities’
(EADTU), described OpenupEd as a centralised communication portal for European
institutions developing MOOCs, which aims to provide guidance to MOOC creators,
as well as being a platform for standardisation and quality assurance.
Launched in September, as the first and only pan-European
MOOCs initiative, OpenupEd is part of the EU’s modernisation agenda for Higher
Education. It is firmly positioned in the public domain, with emphasis placed
on diversity and access: materials developed for OpenupEd-affiliated MOOCs are
encouraged to use Open
Education Resources (teaching
materials released under an intellectual property license that permits their
free use and re-purposing by others), and also have a strong focus on Open
Learning Services, Open Teaching Efforts, being Open to Learners Needs and Open
to Employability and Capabilities Development.
Resolving the tension between widening participation and
making money, whilst maintaining a focus on sound pedagogy, is at the heart of
whether MOOCs will succeed in breaking what has been described as a
‘knowledge-ocracy’ on the part of well-established traditional universities.
Online only, or are SPOCs the way forward?
According to the Fulbright Institution’s Rolf Hoffman,
those in charge of an institution’s finances, the Chief Admin Officers (CAOs),
particularly in the US, see MOOCs as the future because of their money-saving
potential. The majority believe that “fully online” courses should be
incorporated into institutional strategy: investing in blended or hybrid
courses presents a double in cost, rather than saving any money.
Before MOOCs establish themselves, however, they may
already be replaced by SPOCs (small private online classrooms), which are seen
as a way of mitigating what are seen as some of the pedagogical difficulties
faced with purely online courses. Karl Aberer described the success at Ecole
Polytechnique Federale De Lausanne of adapting to something akin to the
long-standing ‘flipped’ classroom model, combining MOOCs and face-to-face
contact-time. Students report appreciating the personalisation and autonomy
that comes from the knowledge transmission and assessment phases taking place
online and combining it with personal interaction for concept deepening and
discussion. This is being seen elsewhere too: after experimenting with MOOCs,
Colorado State University-Global Campus found that with the level of support
required by students exceeding what they could provide on limited budgets, smaller closed online courses were the most viable option, and despite committing to the MOOC ideal, HarvardX (the
universities branch of EdX) is already making a move towards creating scaled-down flipped/SPOC
courses which
are targeted at students that are already enrolled at the institution.
The move towards SPOCs raises questions about just whether
going completely online is necessary or even realistic, how open the courses
and resources are, and who exactly are they are open to.
Economics
A good deal of the ACA-EUA seminar focused on the business
models that institutions and platform providers can adapt or adopt in order to
make MOOCs financially sustainable both in the short and long term. The
availability of a prestigious $40,000 Georgia Tech Computer Science Master’s
degree online for only $7000 is a good example of the changes being imposed on
traditional university business models and the opportunities being made
available for students who want a quality education for less.
Away from commercial partnerships, such as Georgia Tech’s
with technology giant AT&T, certification and assessments appear to be the
most straight-forward method for generating revenue from students –
particularly as for the typical MOOC, even a nominal course registration fee
seems to put participants off.
For the participants taking a course as a way of gaining
some form of accreditation, paying to receive a certificate or taking an
invigilated or proctored exam is worth doing. However, participants are only
likely to pay if the price is right, and that price will be based on whether
the accreditation carries enough value with future employers and other
universities. Hannes Klöpper, co-founder of Germany-based MOOC platform, Iversity, outlined a potential solution for
the problem of accreditation in the development of a ‘universal online market
for academic credit’. His vision is that universities, or corporate MOOC
platform partners on their behalf, can award ECTS credits for completion of a
MOOC course, which through (inter-)national agreements guarantee credit
recognition. Such a system would be difficult but certainly not impossible to
set in place, and would go some way to legitimising MOOCs, aiding
internationalization, addressing some of the challenges of mass higher
education and the emergence of multi/inter-disciplinary courses, which are
reversing the single-degree course atomisation of knowledge.
When MOOCS first emerged, it was predicted that the
lack of accreditation would severely limit participation because of the
perceived lack of legitimacy or worth on the part of the students. The
statistics presented at the ACA-EUA seminar seem to indicate that, for the time
being, the majority of those that enrol on MOOCs are motivated by learning more
about a particular subject as for recreational purposes or for on-going
professional development, rather than a grade, diploma or credit.
Charging for access to journals and textbooks is an
option, but, as with charging for certificates and credit, it throws up
questions about affordability and access. There is also still uncertainty about
how the publishing industry will respond to the new needs of online-based
courses; there is of course a massive opportunity to make money when hundreds
of thousands of students are being recommended a core text, but at the same
time, many students are likely to be put off taking a free course which
requires the purchase of a 1000NOK book - and savvy participants are always
looking for ways to access the materials without having to pay for them.
With relation to business models, MOOCS are also said to
be an increasingly important part of a university’s brand: outside of
established elite intuitions, like Harvard and Princeton in the US and Oxford,
Cambridge and LSE in the UK, visibility and differentiation are crucial for
remaining competitive in a progressively more internationalised student market.
MOOCs also have the potential to increase revenue by being used as
‘try-before-you-buy’ teaser courses designed to entice students to enrol on to
full or part-time traditional fee-paying courses.
The Peak of Inflated Expectations
The media has a significant role in shaping and spinning
the public’s perception of MOOCs, increasing the need for clearheaded academic
reflection. A recurring theme during the day of talks was exactly where MOOCs
may lie on the Gartner Hype Cycle, a representation of the maturity, adoption
and social application of specific technologies which sees them go through
five phases: 1) the Technology Trigger, 2) the Peak of Inflated Expectations,
3) the Trough of Disillusionment, 4) the Slope of Enlightenment, and finally 5)
the Plateau of Productivity.
Figure: The Gartner Hype Cycle. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
The consensus seemed to be that MOOCs hit Peak of Inflated
Expectations in 2012/13. Part of the reason MOOCs and MOOC-like experiments and
the hype and conjecture surrounding them have proliferated so quickly is the
precarious financial situation of many HE institutions and the genuine fear of
being left behind. The hype and pace of change is fuelled by the sense that in
the market place of education, regardless of what you are doing, it is better
to be an actor than a spectator.
Assessments of how MOOCs actually work and their impact on
education and learning are only just beginning to catch up. The maturing of the
MOOC and online distance learning in general is covered by an extensive review
of the current literature in a new report by
the UK’s department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) published this
September. The review concluded that there are significant gaps in the
literature and ‘failings in the MOOC format around sustainability, quality,
equality, equity, financial viability, learning quality and accreditation’,
signalling, some might say, the start of the slide into Trough of
Disillusionment.
Clay Shirky, writer and commentator on internet
technologies, has described MOOCs as ‘a lightning
strike on a rottentree’.
Based on Bill Gates’ maxim that “we always overestimate the change that will
occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the
next ten”, others have taken longer-term view and suggested that MOOCs should
instead be seen as ‘a very slow
tsunami’, “… a gradual but inexorably rolling
change in societal and professional attitudes, pinned at one end by the bedrock
certainty that the elite institutions produce the elite people, and pulled at
the other end by the growing awareness that free isn’t necessarily junk, and
it’s, well, free …”.
MOOCs promise to provide accessible, flexible, free (or
low-cost) high quality education to the masses but they are unlikely the single
solution to the problems currently faced by future students and the Higher
Education sector, particularly given the wider social, political and economic
forces at play and the lack of any viable business models.
Discussions about the pedagogical use and value of MOOCs
to a backseat to ones of business models and competition at the ACA-EUA
seminar, but a comment by Rolf Hoffmann captured one of the central problems of
this drive for change perfectly: When it comes to IT and pedagogy, it’s
sometimes hard to see which one is the dog and which one is the tail. What was
clear from the meeting in Brussels is that whilst MOOCs may not be the silver
bullet that many might hope for, they have kick-started important conversations
about just how online courses and digital resources can help widen
participation and supplement existing university degree programs in new and
exciting ways.
