MOOCS : Revolutionizing Education or the Latest Business Opportunity?
Shirley L. Young · Institutional Repositories DataBase (IRDB) · 2013
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".-174 -(2) Online learning per se 1 is 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 inclass 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.