Video 1: Why open education matters (Blink Tower, 2017)

The video above shows the idealistic world of open educational resources. It has the ability to provide knowledge and resources to people around the world and in subject matters that are unobtainable from large portions of the population. However, after reading the article The Paradoxes of Open Educational Resources (Cope & Kalantzis, 2023), I had mixed feelings about the views presented. On the one hand, open resources are able to provide access to anyone with an internet connection, yet on the other hand, a lot of open resources (not just in education) are complete rubbish. Quality control is up to the community, and in some communities, it’s not a priority.

However, there is still a future and there is still potential. In my personal experience working with students, many of them turn to platforms like Khan Academy and Coursera when they struggle to understand their teacher or if they need to pick up a new skill. These large platforms also cater to those who are curious and want to learn more about a topic or possibly boost their resume. Many of these open course platforms have free options if one just wants to learn content, but then also a paid version for the certification that the work was completed. For quality control, many of these resources are backed by large institutions and can be very similar (or the same) as the courses that are taught at those locations.

There’s also a subtle difference between open resources and free resources. For a comparison, Wikipedia is open, where anyone can make edits to (almost) any article and it’s up to the community to ensure the content is correct. Free is searching for a topic on YouTube and finding many views on a subject without knowing which ones are providing quality and correct instruction. Many of the massively open online course (MOOC) sites have a mixed model, where the courses are open in the sense that anyone can take them, but they are only free if you are taking them just for the knowledge and not the credentials. However, the cost for the credentials do tend to be much less expensive than the equivalent course at an institution. “Researchers found that institutional costs per MOOC completer were far below those for traditional online courses: $74–272 compared with $7,000–10,000” (Hollands & Kazi, 2019).

Figure 1: What is a MOOC? (Plourde, 2013)

As the graphic in Figure 1 above alludes to, the definition of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) has somewhat of a loose definition. Many who are familiar with the term can list a handful of platforms such as Moodle, Coursera, EdX, and so on, and then have debates about whether platforms like Khan Academy or Udemy fall under the MOOC category. One of the largest commonalities between all of these platforms is, unlike a standard university, anyone with access to a computer and the internet can take courses. There are no applications, no SAT or GPA requirements, and many of them come without a cost (Daniel, 2012). That comes with a caveat, though. Many of the larger for-profit platforms charge a fee for proof that you have completed a course or access to more material. In some instances, you may be able to take a course, but if you want to actually pursue a degree, you must apply to the program just like a normal college. (Coursera, 2024).

The origin of the term “MOOC” came from a course taught by Siemens and Downes in 2008 on “Connectivism and Connective Knowledge” (Cormier & Siemens, 2010). The course was a hybrid between a standard paid university course that had a limited number of seats (25) mixed with an open online non-credit course with no limit on the number of participants (2,300 enrolled). Cormier and Siemens found that the engagement that was provided by the online participants brought “a wide variety of perspectives to bear on a given topic” (p. 34). Some scholars have also made a differentiation between types of MOOCs and their pedagogical style: cMOOCs and xMOOCs (Hill, 2012; Daniel, 2012). According to Daniel (2012), cMOOCs, referring to the style of Siemen and Downes’s, were based off of connectivism principals, while xMOOCs were derived from the courses that large universities started offering in 2012 and follow a more behaviorist style. These learning theories will be discussed later, however the main difference is that cMOOCs tend to be learner centered, while xMOOC follow a lot of the same pedagogy as instructor centered activities such as watching a lecture.

Video 2: Overview of connectivism (USC: Learning and Teaching, 2014)

In Video 2 above, George Siemens (2014) discusses a very brief overview of where the idea and learning are all built through a series of networks, internally through biological processes such as neurons making connections, connecting new concepts with concepts already known, and on a social level making connections with others as aided by technology. Siemens’s original paper in 2004 (reprinted in 2005) provides his initial proposal of the new learning theory he coined “Connectivism”. He believes the learning is somewhat chaotic and is not an entirely internal process, such that it relies on social experiences. Siemens proposed that the principles of connectivism are:

• Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions.
• Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources.
• Learning may reside in non-human appliances.
• Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known
• Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning.
• Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill.
• Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning activities.
• Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decision. (p. 6)

Downes, Siemens’s co-instructor in the first MOOC, has a slightly different take on learning in what he calls “Connective Knowledge” (2005). Connective knowledge is the knowledge of the relationship that is made between differing pieces of information. Connective knowledge requires an action, or as Downes calls it, an “interaction”. It seems to be a more systematic way of viewing knowledge in that facts of individual items are not as important in how those facts connect and build upon the knowledge of how they are related. However, very few have published on this topic, with a Scopus search only resulting in 15 results when using the keywords “connective knowledge,” so there is not a lot of information on how it has been used in other courses outside of Siemens' and Downes’ course.

While Downes and Siemens have developed their own pedagogies for online learning, others have looked at the importance of using more well known learning theories. In a paper by Archambault et al. (2022), they studied different frameworks that are deemed important to online learning. While their focus was on K-12 education, the frameworks they list are applicable to learning for any age. Figure 2 below shows the model they developed of the five pillars of online pedagogy, which are “a) Build Relationships and Community, (b) Incorporate Active Learning, (c) Leverage Learner Agency, (d) Embrace Mastery Learning, and (e) Personalize the Learning Process” (p. 181).

Figure 2: Five pillars of online pedagogy (Archambault et al., 2022).

The major learning theories that Archambault et al. (2022) present as the foundation to effective online teaching used to create their five pillars are constructivism and situated learning. In a study performed by Toven-Linsey et al. (2015), they too emphasized the importance of student-centered and social based learning theories such as constructivism and situated learning, but differentiated constructivism into cognitive constructivism and social constructivism.

Constructivism was a theory developed by child psychologist Jean Piaget who believed that knowledge was created by making connections between thoughts and experiences and constructing meaning from those connections (Piaget, 1929/1971). This is later what scholars started referring to as cognitive constructivism since it primarily focused on what could be learned from “understanding of primary sources and interactive materials, including open-ended questions that promote personal inquiry and discovery” (Toven-Lindsey et al., 2015, p. 3). In contrast, social constructivism has been attributed to Lev Vygotsky through his theories of the zone of proximal development and his social development theory (Pritchard & Woollard, 2010). In their text, Pritchard and Woollard summarize the major points of Vygotsky’s work as “the people around the learner have a central role in learning; the people around the learner influence, sometimes deeply, how the learner sees the world; and certain tools affect the way in which learning and intellectual development progresses” (p. 35). In essence, the interactions that the student has with their instructor and their peers has a large role in their learning outcomes.

In the chapter “A Critical Look at MOOCs”, J. Michael Spector (2017) doesn’t argue that MOOCs are necessarily bad, just that there are currently no effective methods employed to assess the learning of the students. At the time the chapter was written, he claims that there will not be “a significant impact on learning until MOOCs evolve into courses that include formative feedback, well-structured learning activities, and serious formative and summative assessments” (p. 140). Spector also discusses the lack of proper course design that goes into a typical MOOC and that instructional designers are usually left out of the process of creating a course. In a 10-year review of MOOCs, Yousef and Sumner (2020), note that most MOOCS use assessments that tend to be low quality, computer graded, multiple choice exams with very few having peer or instructor reviewed feedback. Similar to the remarks from Spector, they also found that out of 241 papers, none were focused on the design of the pedagogy or developing metacognition. Much of the learning uses a teacher-centric learning style as opposed to a student centered approach, which goes against the learning theories presented earlier.

MOOCs are also known for notoriously low completion rates. In Yousef and Sumner (2020) study reviewing literature, they claim a MOOC dropout rate of 95% of participants and it’s largely due to the lack of formative assessment and intentional engagement. In another study, Thompson et al. (2023) tracked the completion rate throughout a series of three different courses of the same subject (MatLAB). In their findings, only about 48% of the students who registered for each course completed the first task (a survey) and only about 5%-11% completed each of the series of courses. In the early days of xMOOCs, Daniel (2012) chalked up part of the low completion rates as being due to “tourists from other institutions checking what the fuss was about” (p.10), however Reich and Ruiperez-Valiente (2019) analyzed data from edX over a six-year span from 2012-2018 and found that the completion rates stayed consistently low over the years. They also discovered that retaining learners for more than one course dropped significantly over the six-year span, from 38% in 2013 to 6% in 2018.

From personal experience in higher education, the 50% drop-off rate from registering to participating is fairly standard for any free activity. This phenomenon was seen both in large scale events such as a 200 person make-a-thon, to smaller social events aimed at creating community. No study was performed, however the 50% rate was typically used for planning and budgeting for any free event that required an RSVP. I also theorize that a large portion of the students who actually complete a course have some sort of extrinsic motivation, either through paying the fee for credentials, working towards a degree, or needing the knowledge for their career. I am hoping to look more into this matter and find some data to back it up.

Figure 3 - Results from a survey to faculty about teaching MOOCs (Kolowich, 2013)

Another critical factor to look at is the perceived quality of the courses offered. A survey performed by The Chronicle of Higher Education asked over 100 faculty of MOOCs who also taught the same or similar course at a university their opinions (Kolowich, 2013). While many of them had very positive responses to their experience with teaching a MOOC and how useful they thought MOOCs could be in expanding accessibility, as seen in the results in Figure 3, only 48% of them believed that the MOOC they taught was as “academically rigorous as the traditional classroom version” (Kolowich, 2013). The argument of what is considered academically rigorous has alway been in contention with alternative styles of teaching or even the same teaching yet accessible to more students. Harvard Extension School (HES) was founded in 1910 as a way of offering free lectures and affordable courses to the public (About Us, 2024). Many of the courses taught at HES are the same or very similar to the courses offered by the college or one of the graduate schools, and are taught by Harvard faculty, yet due to the open nature of the school, there are those that feel it is of much lesser quality than any of the other schools at the university (Ferreira, 2021). While working at Harvard, I was able to attain a degree from HES for the accessible price of $40 a course, yet my learning was constantly attacked by undergraduate students that didn’t see it as “real Harvard.” Daniel (2012) postulates that the shutting down of the UK’s quality assessment survey in the 1990’s to early 2000’s was not due to the inability to accurately measure the quality of teaching, but due to the Open University being ranked higher than many of the elite universities in Britain, such as Oxford, which caused those at those elite institutions to find fault with the assessment methods.

As was discussed earlier, there are multiple classifications of MOOCs, however the current classifications are typically only concerned about delivery methods and social interactivity. This section will compare two different models of MOOCs based on their purpose: Khan Academy and Coursera.

Video 3: Daphne Koller discusses the early vision of Coursera (TED, 2012)

Video 4: Salman Khan discusses the origins of Khan Academy (TED, 2011)

I want to present these The two TED talks above describe the early usage and vision of the two platforms. I want to present these two videos side-by-side and compare the differences in how both platforms started but the similarities in their missions. In the first, Daphne Holler (TED, 2012) describes a world where anyone, anywhere, can have access to education from top tier universities. In the second, Salman Khan (TED, 2011) describes how the current educational landscape is failing the students and that anyone is capable of learning if given the time and resources. While both want to expand access to education and use technology to leverage that, their approaches and motivations are much different. We will now take a closer look at these two platforms.

With the ever increasing requirement for obtaining a bachelor's degree for jobs that only need the skill set from a high school diploma (Stark & Poppler, 2016), and the inability to educate all those who want to be educated in higher ed, we need to start looking for more public options to provide the credentials that employers are looking for. Open educational resources, especially MOOCs, allow for a greater number of students to receive the education they need for the new requirements that employers are looking for. No longer can a high school degree alone provide enough education for someone to live a productive future and raise a family (Stark & Poppler, 2016). With the use of platforms such as Khan Academy, students can enhance their secondary school education and be competitive for applying to colleges. With platforms such as Coursera, even though there is still a significant cost required, the fees are much lower than a residential campus degree. Added with the fact of not requiring students to live in high cost of living areas that top universities tend to be in, even more savings could be actualized.

However, even if the learning outcomes in MOOCs are the same as their in-person counterpart, the value to employers is still stigmatized and not valued as highly (Rivas et al., 2020). Many employers recognize certificates and degrees from MOOCs, and some companies like Google and SAP even create their own courses for their employees, however the study performed by Rivas et al. claimed that hiring managers and human resource professionals were “less likely to think that a MOOC demonstrated a specific skill or ability as compared to a traditional credential” (p. 3). While there is still stigma that the educational value of MOOC courses are lower than their traditional counterparts, there is some evidence that using them for professional development can help workers gain skills to remain employed (Castaño-Muñoz & Rodrigues, 2021).

Both platforms presented in this work have the ability to reach vastly more students than a standard classroom-based education. Koheller jokes that her colleague, Andrew Ng, would have to teach his machine learning class in-person for 250 years to reach the same number of students he was able to teach for one semester online (TED, 2012). Likewise, Salman Khan also expressed that by 2012, his site was “helping to educate more than six million unique students per month—more than ten times the num­ber of people who have gone to Harvard since its inception in 1636” (Khan, 2012, p. 8).

However, both of these courses struggle somewhat in delivering a fully social experience. In Khan Academy, the work is completely asynchronous. Students can use a chat feature similar to the YouTube comment section to ask questions on the content from that section, but in one of the courses I tested out (College Biology), some of the questions would go days or weeks without someone responding. Since Coursera’s courses are similar to standard college courses, the amount of social interaction is primarily left up to the course designer or instructor. In the study by Toven-Lindsey et al. (2015), they found that a majority of the courses within a range of university level MOOCs relied on what they refer to as “objectivist-individual” instruction, basically teacher-centric instruction with recorded videos and multiple choice exams. Many offered a discussion board, but it was not the focus of the instruction.

Future work would be to look at the retention rates of different MOOCs and compare them to their teaching and learning styles. Do students stay motivated in courses where they have more interaction with peers and the instructor? How well do the certificates and degrees hold weight when it comes to applying for jobs or higher degrees? Even though MOOCs have yet to destroy higher education as was predicted when they came out, will they start to change the landscape more, especially post-pandemic when more people now have experience with online learning?