This was the final week of our community cultures block. I’ve played around with Evernote for the first time but I spent most of my time to think back to MOOCs, what communities mean for learning and how to express my findings in my micro-ethnography.
It is understandable how the introduction of OER and MOOCs was embraced by many with the promise of accessibility and narrowing the global digital divide. Research now often highlights the limitations of MOOCs in particular. Ross et al. (2019) summarise the issue in their article Critical approaches to valuing digital education: learning with and from the Manifesto for Teaching and Learning: ‘The limitations around the re-use of some MOOC content; socio-political issues around who creates and who ‘consumes’ MOOCs; the status of for-profit MOOC platform providers; attempts to create walled gardens to better capture MOOC learner data: these and other issues have generated heated discussions about who benefits from this educational trend and to what extent the promise of openness is fulfilled by these courses (Almeida 2017; Bady 2013; Decuypere 2018).’
After investigating the community culture of my MOOC more closely, I had mixed feelings about who benefits. Undoubtedly, students can access well-thought out teaching materials and apply their knowledge by thinking about issues in their own cities, for example. With no tutor presence, hundreds of posts without replies and a Twitter handle that hasn’t been used for several years, I nonetheless felt that the course providers are the big winners. Once created and up-and-running, not much effort is needed to collect student fees year after year (if they choose the verified certificate route). I find it therefore easy to agree with Knox (2015) in that ‘[the] drive for technologies that facilitate our ‘community learning’ have simultaneously embroiled education in a Silicon Valley culture, motivated by data acquisition and profit.’
References
Knox, J. 2015. Community Cultures. Excerpt from Critical Education and Digital Cultures. In Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory. M. A. Peters (ed.). DOI 10.1007/978-981-287-532-7_124-1
Ross, J., Bayne, S., Lamb, J.(2019).Critical approaches to valuing digital education: learning with and from the Manifesto for Teaching Online. Digital Culture & Education, 11(1), 22-35.
