MOOCs: A brighter future?

A

Online education is quickly changing the landscape of higher learning. Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, have been the platform for Britain’s Open University for more than three decades. And since 2011, Ivy League universities such as MIT, Harvard, Stanford, and many others have jumped on board, motivated by high recruitment rates and rave reviews. But whether MOOCs are sustainable educational models is still up for debate.

B

MOOCs are online courses with interactive user forums aimed at high-volume student participation. They incorporate traditional course materials such as readings and problem sets, but also utilise unconventional materials such as interactive digital presentations and graphic novels. Teaching is done with video lecture, followed-up with online discussions, peer-review, and group collaboration. Assessments mainly consist of online exams and quizzes, but can also take the form of crowd-sourced feedback—otherwise known as peer grading—on analyses, reflections, and reports posted to the forum. 

C

There are a number of ways that MOOCs enhance the educational experience for students and benefit educational institutes. For students, MOOCs are more accessible in just about every way. First, most MOOCs are free, and those that aren’t offer highly competitive course fees. The philosophy of open education is to remove barriers from access to education, and MOOCs do exactly that. By removing, or at least reducing, economic barriers, MOOCs eliminate the marginalisation of students from low socio-economic backgrounds, a common complaint about traditional higher education. 

In addition, MOOCs bring top-quality education, once reserved for the elite of society, to the general masses. EdX, a non-profit MOOC provider founded in May 2012 offers free courses from 28 Ivy League institutions, including Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of California-Berkley. Since open education forgoes the application process, any individual regardless of their prior academic record may take advantage of the courses, giving unprecedented and unconditional access to the world’s highest levels of education.

D

For educational institutes, developing MOOC capacity is an investment. Most MOOC providers operate not-for-profit, insisting that education is a human right that all should have access to. This does not, however, mean there is no revenue to generate. Quite the contrary. The popularity of MOOCs is creating an increasing demand by both students and educational institutions alike, with up to 160,000 students registering for a single Harvard course. There is high revenue potential for licensing popular online materials and allowing other educational intuitions to purchase rights to use them as part of their curriculum. For this reason, major universities are jumping on the trend, solidifying their stronghold on the MOOC market, and hoping it will pay off in returns later.

E

Yet despite all of the hype, many remain skeptical about the long-term sustainability of MOOCs. The weakness most often attacked by critics is the high dropout rate, which in some cases exceeds 90 percent. However, MOOC proponents attribute dropout rates to the browsing of courses, contending that students who intend to finish a course from the outset usually do.

But more pertinent are critiques of the broader consequences of expanding online education. Take, for example, how MOOCs can force lesser universities into bankruptcy because they can’t compete with the courses being offered by Ivy League schools. The potential for a monopoly in the educational sector with open education is very high. While some argue that the increased competition will improve teaching quality, many feel that such a benefit does not outweigh the likely decrease in the variety of academic perspectives. And most concerning to academics is the threat to space for critical discourses that have challenged and pushed the boundaries of normative theoretical frameworks.

F

Only time will tell if MOOC providers can face these challenges and provide a model of open online education that is as appealing to popular demand as it is beneficial to institutions and the academy. In the meantime, one thing is certain: MOOCs are having a widespread and significant influence on ideas about not only higher learning, but about the very essence of traditional pedagogy.