I found a series of Kozinets videos on YouTube which are short and very illuminating. The pity is that I found them slightly late in the day when I could have made better use of them for my micro-ethnography.
Gender, Representation and OnlineParticipation:A Quantitative Study
The study found in the link below provides some insight into the way different groups, especially women are represented (or not) on the internet.
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While working on my micro-ethnography, I considered the issue of gender at an early point in my study. My study of participation by different genders was very basic and I determined it by using the name supplied by the participants. There was not much difference in the number of participants between women and men but there were more women than men in the thread I chose to study.
The study by Bogdan Vasilescu, Andrea Capiluppi and Alexander Serebrenik conducted 8 years ago may perhaps be a bit outdated by now but reading through the conclusions I could start to understand how anonymity could be more common on certain platforms than others. Anonymity could act in the same way a pseudonym did years ago, to comment without prejudice.
Identity in Online Communities: Social Networking Sites and Language Learning Identity in Online Communities: Social Networking Sites and Language Learning
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This is a study of a community made up of foreign language learners which focuses on the creation of new relationships.
Of particular interest is the section on Mediation (pg119) which describes how mediation has no particular rules and regulations but is fluid and ‘arbitrary’ and the concept of ‘impression’. The idea of trying to find someone, one can relate to in an online community can be a very interesting concept to study. Do members of an online community decide to like or reply to another member on the basis of what is being posted or because they somehow feel that they can associate with that persona?
Week 6 – Have MOOCs been created with the idea of online communities or are online communities a phenomenon of MOOCs?
This week’s posts have been somewhat similar in gist and content to week 5’s but possibly taken more from the perspective of the economy of MOOCs. MOOCs are one of those inventions where the whole seems greater than the sum of the individual parts, often making us wonder if they are seen as a product, a service or even both (Sultan, 2014)?
This week I spent some time analyzing discourse in the MOOC I have chosen, mostly what brought the people on the MOOC to take the course. The MOOC I have chosen ‘Launching Innovation in Schools‘ (which I decided to change to earlier on) is mostly populated by professionals in education. Most of those who took the MOOC decided to do so because they felt they could take something out of the course as opposed to simply taking the course for self-satisfaction (which in a way is also taking something from the MOOC). In this way, a MOOC represents a service. It is providing the necessary material for someone to learn. Yet MOOCs are also a form of ‘servitization‘, defined as
“the increased offering of fuller market packages or ‘bundles’ of customer-focused combinations of goods, services, support, self-service and knowledge in order to add value to core product offerings” and claim that manufacturing firms are increasingly moving towards offering services in order to avoid competing on cost alone.
(Vandermerwe and Rada as cited in Sultan, 2014)
Online communities pertaining to MOOCs are therefore a phenomenon that is part of this servitization but without the need for MOOC organisers to invest any capital into it. They do advertise numbers of participants in an effort to attract more people to the course and investment is required in designing the platform to allow for communication but it is like parking a hamburger van outside a football stadium. All you have to do is wait for the people to come by with little effort.
References:
Sultan, N. (2014) Cloud and MOOCs: The Servitization of IT and Education. Available at: https://www.uos.ac.uk/sites/default/files/basic_file/CLOUD-AND-MOOCS.pdf. (Accessed: 20th January 2020).
Image obtained and modified from: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart
Learning everywhere and for everyone
This is a short advertisement by FutureLearn which I found somewhat interesting because it reminded me of some of the concepts I am keeping in mind during the micro-ethnography, such as the nationality of different online participants and the use of language. Although the video uses different accents from different national languages, this is something that is lost in an online community.
MOOCs Are Global. So Where Do They Stand With New European Privacy Laws?
How have GPDR (General Data Protection Regulations) limited the use of data used by MOOCs? Legal institutions are fighting for limitations and considerations of individual data and how it is used but are people taking MOOCs even bothered. An interesting read and follow-up to ethical guidelines when conducting ethnographies.
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CLOUD AND MOOCS: THE SERVITIZATION OF IT AND EDUCATION
This is a paper that brought to mind some of the concepts mentioned in Lister (2009), especially the use of sustaining and disruptive innovation described in pages 5 and 6. It also sheds some light on the powers behind MOOCs and poses the interesting question of whether MOOCs were created because students needed them or, on the other hand, if it was a commercial plan by certain companies to make money.
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MOOCs to university: a consumer goal and marketing perspective
This look at the way completion of a MOOC can be used to motivate learners to take on a university program. This is a journal (Journal of Marketing) publication which studies MOOCs from a consumer goal perspective, hypothesizing that people who finish a MOOC are more likely to start and finish a university program especially if there is a powerful enough link between the learning and delivery pattern. A goal achieved by completing a MOOC leads to an interest in setting up another goal which is the university course.
This approach is different from blended learning which makes use of both online and offline modes of higher education learning at the same time. Rather it uses the idea of a cheaper and more widely available service to narrow down contenders for, perhaps, university courses requiring more commitment or which have more rigid structures.
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a16z Podcast: Community and Culture, Online by a16z
We’re so used to thinking of “community” as our friends, families, and neighbors. But what a community is, and who it is made of, has changed thanks to the internet, and without our noticing it. What happens when online communities — really, new subcultures — form primarily around interests, not just personal relationships?
Featuring VP of Product at Reddit Alex Le, CEO of Rabbit Michael Temkin, and CEO and co-founder of HVMN Geoffrey Woo — in conversation with a16z general partner Chris Dixon — this episode of the a16z Podcast is based on a discussion that took place at a16z’s annual Summit in November 2017. As communities of strangers and activities connect online and offline in new and different ways, what else changes?
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Week 5: The needs of online communities.
The posts over week 5 have hopefully been proof of the different needs associated with online communities in an effort to determine what aspects I should concentrate on in the micro-ethnography.
Mark Wills’ view that online community encourage communities that are essentially neutral in the embodiment of genderless, ageless and classless notions may perhaps be counterargued by the last few posts for this week which show an inherent need for MOOCs to suit the needs of different types of communities. Being neutral and anonymous might have been a common practice in the first online communities but nowadays online participants seem to feel the need to show who they are and where they come from. This has also been evident in a short investigation of my MOOC which has shown that few people use pseudonyms any more.
This week has also been about the economics of MOOCs. In one of the articles, a major MOOC platform representative of Coursera states that:
At Coursera, we don’t really see ourselves as a MOOC provider, we look at ourselves as a three-sided platform that’s connecting learners, educators and employers.
(Kapeesh Saraf, 2019)
MOOCs might perhaps be realising that it is not just a question of posting material online for everyone to consume but it is about the need to bring together all interested parties in a continuous effort to meet the needs of different communities. Couple this with the need (still evident) of having face-to-face contact and it seems that teachers will not be out of a profession any time soon.
References:
Johnson, S. (2019). Much Ado About MOOCs: Where Are We in the Evolution of Online Courses? Available at: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-02-26-much-ado-about-moocs-where-are-we-in-the-evolution-of-online-courses. (Accessed: 15th February 2020).