MOOCs: The future? Or history rewritten?

Blog Post 12/1

I was very intrigued in this week’s topic on massive open online courses. This actually marks the first time I have heard of this intervention. I am personally an advocate for personal interactions as a pathway to effective learning, so reading this I had to have a neutral mindset. A few of the aspects of MOOC’s that benefited students were the accessibility that these courses give to students. Morris and Stommel then argue that even though these courses are online, they can maintain a community. The authors explain that community is not synonymous with learning process, in that their learning process was shifting consistently with their experience in the online course creating a community in and of itself.

However through reading this, much of my concerns were the same as some of the other articles we read. Bady (2013) was strongly opposed to the MOOCs and suggested that reinforcing these courses would contribute to the hierarchy of education already existing. Those who are privileged enough to self-learn would then be the ones taking these courses and most likely finishing them. In Kelly’s (2014) piece he views MOOCs as tools not as a solution for education equity. In Kelly’s piece he also explains that these courses are free and could give opportunities to those of lower income. However, when looking at the graphs in the article the difference between online courses and in person interaction for developmental courses was illustrated. Online courses did not compare well to personal interactions (Figure 3).

Though this intervention seems too drastic, Kelly also brings up a point as to whether we are comparing apples to apples. Can we really compare the difference between face-to-face and online courses accurately if they are completely different? In addition, will the bachelor degree be “watered down” as a natural consequence of implementing MOOCs? Knowing that there is a large population with no access to consistent technology, will MOOCs really generate wider gaps between the lower income and higher income students?

We must remember that this intervention is only in experimental stages and much research still has to happen to assess these courses. My biggest fear is that we are going to use MOOCs as a big band-aid for those of underrepresented identities. It does not matter the size of the intervention, a band-aid is still a band-aid — it only heals smaller wounds. Education equity is no small wound and I will continue to see where this conversation of MOOCs ventures off to.