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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

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Week 3-Tying up

This week was a bit of a juggle bringing together the readings, posts and completing the artefact. My postings have ranged from delving into film culture and feminism, education and technology and today’s video post on AI and the predictions made in the spread of the coronavirus. Quite a mix to say the least and a close representation of what was going on inside my head 😊.

Although I have heard and enjoyed watching and listening to success stories brought about by the implementation of technology, sometimes the ideas tend to put me slightly on edge. What seems in, a way as a straightforward leap from nothing to everything (possibly in areas or countries with different socioeconomic backgrounds) makes me wonder if one needs special super-insight into stripping the learning process to its very fundamentals and applying technology to it. I often find that over-analysing the use of technology and how it benefits education often blindfolds educators into simply providing the means to search for information and allowing learners to enjoy the process of discovery. Many times, and in my experience the use of technology needs to be mired in protocols, time constraints, syllabi and educator training. Why do some people find it easy using social networking platforms, sharing, buying online and a host of other things but then still find it difficult to implement similar technologies within class sessions?

Finally, the video on the paradigm shift in the use of digital time is something I would like to develop later on as it can perhaps offer an insight in the way older generations find it difficult to relate to younger ones on the uses of technology. Perhaps older generations still tend to use technology in a sequential manner, allocating time for it and range of use while for younger generations it becomes an extension of their physical, psychological and even emotional selves.