The Promise of MOOCs

When MOOCs emerged around a decade ago the hype was intense. In 2013, when MOOCs were still in their infancy, the New York Times writer Thomas Friedman wrote:

...nothing has more potential to enable us to reimagine higher education than the massive open online course ….For relatively little money, the U.S. could rent space in an Egyptian village, install two dozen computers and high-speed satellite Internet access, hire a local teacher as a facilitator, and invite in any Egyptian who wanted to take online courses with the best professors in the world, subtitled in Arabic…I can see a day soon where you’ll create your own college degree by taking the best online courses from the best professors from around the world ….paying only the nominal fee for the certificates of completion. It will change teaching, learning and the pathway to employment.

What have we learnt about this educational innovation in the last ten years? Despite it’s promise, several studies focusing on learner participation and achievement have shown that MOOCs haven’t turned out to be the educational game-changer many predicted.

As a MOOC participant, like many other learners, I’ve mostly adopted the role of explorer and lurker, as opposed to an actively working towards a certification or badge. Having begun working on a MOOC for the first time, I’ve taken a greater interest in exploring a range of MOOCs across several platforms to assess what works well and what doesn’t.

The obvious benefit of MOOCs is their reach. Learners from across the globe with an internet connection can access learning from some of the leading educational institutions for free. This is an amazing value proposition and is especially beneficial for learners who otherwise wouldn’t have access. Studies show, however, that an overwhelming number of participants who complete courses already hold bachelor’s degrees and are from high socioeconomic countries. The challenge of catering to learners from the global south is one that I’m currently grappling with while designing this MIT on social entrepreneurship. It will be interested to evaluate our first group of learners to see if the strategies we’re implementing (culturally relevant activities, belonging interventions and ESL accessibility) have any effect on learner persistence and completion from these regions.

MOOCs, unlike most classroom learning experiences, can use media creatively for learner engagement and for effective communication of concepts. Two courses I’ve recently participated in, CS50: an introduction to programming by Harvard on the EdX platform and Introduction to Programming on Linkedin Learning were great examples of this. Instructors in both of these courses illustrated computational thinking in really interesting and creative ways. CS50, which attracts a large number of learners and clearly has a large budget employs special effects and graphics that you might expect from an advertising agency. The Linkedin Learning course, even on a seemingly low budget, is able to use editing, after effects and sound in ways that make the explicit teaching more engaging than an ordinary university lecture. While some courses make the most of this affordance, others fall short and rely on long didactic lecture style videos that leave learners with short attention spans like me falling off.

The main limitation of MOOCs and the reason they can’t compare with in-person learning is the challenge of building community. Discussion boards and social media don’t allow for the type of constructivist methods of deeper learning that in-person experiences allow. I think that this limitation is also an area for innovation and technologies like VR and AR may provide solutions in the future. If we can crack this code, the original promise of MOOCs may be realized.