'Dark' side of the MOOC: Shedding light on the construction, culture and consequences of an emerging social movement

Abstract

Massive Open Online Courses (‘MOOCs’) emerged on the global higher education scene in 2012. Champions of these largely free, video-based courses – offered by some of the most elite universities in the world – claim they can democratise higher education. Critics suggest that if MOOCs were to be a disruptive force in higher education, they would surely be its demise. Buried amid this pro- and anti-MOOC discourse is talk of a ‘MOOC movement’ that has gained and lost global popularity over time. The original contribution of this thesis is its illumination of the ‘dark’, previously unexamined aspects of the MOOC movement: its construction, culture and consequences. In adopting a social constructionist perspective and a mixed methods approach, the thesis demonstrates how the MOOC movement is constructed through the deliberate messaging of providers, and how meaning is negotiated and reconstructed by users at the individual, interpersonal and broader social level. It also provides an explanation of what impacts different constructions and degrees of affiliation with the MOOC movement have on the culture and consequences of MOOCs more broadly, and vice versa.

Data from focus groups and an online survey suggest that, far from just media spin, there are users who believe in and identify with the MOOC movement. The identifiers tend to perceive MOOCs as a learning community, while the non-identifiers regard them as a learning tool. User attitudes and experiences also suggest that by and large, the MOOC movement is achieving the goals set by providers to increase access to the ‘world’s best’ higher education and promote anywhere, anytime learning, though perhaps more in terms of convenience than as a means to overcome geographical constraint. These predominantly free and unaccredited courses have also been shown to have high value among users, encourage peer support, and display strong potential for application in non-education settings.

However, not all MOOC successes are entirely clear-cut. The issue around empowering and connecting users – two other provider goals that are highly correlated – is that the culture of MOOC forums, assessed through participant observation, can be incredibly divisive. What’s more, despite attracting many thousands of enrolments per course, few users actually engage with the discussion forums. From this perspective, MOOCs (or at least their forums) are neither massive nor open; they’re relatively small and exclusive. This is important for university administrators and higher education policymakers to understand. MOOCs cannot simply be viewed as the key to access and funding woes. For some users, MOOCs are representative of a life-changing movement towards personal growth and greater access to higher education. For others, they are hubs for cyberbullies and trolls, or they have little significance at all. Just as a review of history shows that the MOOC movement does not represent a wholesale revolution in higher education delivery, it is not a panacea for the ailments of contemporary universities, or even a complete assessment of the MOOC phenomenon. Nonetheless, by virtue of the beliefs and behaviours of those who do claim affiliation, it is a real movement with real consequences. Show more