“The insight that technology does not determine culture, but that they are co-determining, co-constructive forces, is a crucially important one” (Kozinets, 2010, p22)
Much of my reading and research this week has gone into considering the motives of designers and providers of MOOCS, whether conscious or subconscious. I particularly appreciated Adam’s (2019) text and the concept of coloniality. This is particularly relevant to the context in which I work (99% of my students NOT from a European background, over 75% Indigenous) as the education system in Australia, despite some attempt to correct, is still a product of the country’s colonial past. The truth is that the education system incorporates these biases because society and Australian culture holds these biases.
This took me on a pathway of trying to better understand MOOC funding and the various business models in an attempt to fully appreciate the motivations. If the vast majority of MOOCs are from the global north (Olakulehin et al., 2013) then the capitalist culture would clearly explain a lot about the outputs of these resources. However, I then started to consider a sentence in Adam’s (2019) text about “global” equating to “western” and asked myself whether a writer would still believe this to be true in fifty or one hundred years.
I went on a reading journey in order to understand the role that China currently plays, and will play, in the MOOC space. Three years after the year of the MOOC, 2015 might be considered the year of the Chinese MOOC (Zhang et al., 2019). I was intrigued how, contrary to the West, MOOCs in China are necessarily viewed as lower cost options and how centralised government decision-making has influenced the sector.
As time passes, and MOOCs become a more embedded part of global education culture, how will the sector look with China, as a global superpower, as a major player? Education cannot be value free, neutral or impartial (Adam et al., 2019), and China’s cultural values will clearly be a major influencer in how education is delivered.
Adam, T. (2019) Digital neocolonialism and massive open online courses (MOOCs): colonial pasts and neoliberal futures. Learning, Media and Technology, 44(3), 365-380.
Adam, T., Bali, M., Hodgkinson-Williams, C. & Morgan, T. (2019) Can we decolonize OER/Open?, OER19. 4 November 2019. Available online: https://oer19.oerconf.org/news/blog-can-we-decolonize-oer-open-decolonizeopen/ [Accessed 4 November 2019].
Kozinets, R. V. (2010) Netnography: doing ethnographic research online. London: Sage
Olakulehin, F. & Singh, G. (2013) Widening access through openness in higher education in the developing world: A Bourdieusian field analysis of experiences from the National Open University of Nigeria . Open Praxis, 5(1), 31-40.
Timmis, S. & Muhuro, P. (2019) De-coding or de-colonising the technocratic university? Rural students’ digital transitions to South African higher education. Learing, Media & Technology, 44(3), 252-266.
Zhang, J., Sziegat, H., Perris, K. & Zhou, C. (2019) More than access: MOOCs and changes in Chinese
higher education. Learning, Media & Technology, 44(2), 108-123