Disruptor, Saviour, or Distractor: MOOCs and their role in higher education

Disruptor, Saviour, or Distractor: MOOCs and their role in higher

education’

George Siemens, PhDJune 19, 2013

UW-Madison

Context

Education Sector Factbook, 2012

Allen & Seaman 2011

Increasing diversity of student profiles

The U.S. is now in a position when less than half of students could be

considered fulltime students. In other words, students who can attend campus five days a week nine-to-five,

are now a minority.(Bates, 2013)

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 2013

McKinsey Quarterly, 2012

Moody’s Investor Services, 2013

The “why we have MOOCs” formula

DK+ T+ L + (-)U= MOOCs

Plus humans have been very naughty historically, so we deserve them

The MOOC formula

Diversification of knowledge needs + advancement of Tech/digital/mobile + increased proficiency of Learners + lack of University response = MOOCs

Prominent MOOCs enshrine, optimize, and instantiate the education system of the past

This is bad

“Both student and teacher are unhappy when chained to curricula and syllabi, to tests and mediocre standards. An atmosphere of uninspired and uninspiring common sense may well produce satisfactory mastery of technical “know how” and testable factual information. Such an atmosphere, however, stifles genuine understanding and the spirit of adventure in research.”

Karl Jaspers, The Idea of the University 1959

An education system that fails to emulate the characteristics information in an era is

doomed to fail. Information today is:

OpenDistributedScalableSocialGenerativeNetworkedSelf-organizedAdaptiveGlobal

(I’ll pick up on this later)

What we are seeing is the complexification of higher education

Learning needs are complex, ongoing

Simple singular narrative won’t suffice going forward

The idea of the university is expanding and diversifying

Much of what MOOCs address is the shadow education system. They are not actual competition with the existing education system

The university among us

From the current standpoint, we see the MOOC as the hub of change

MOOCs are more accurately seen as a node in an expanding ecosystem of edtech innovation, emerging pedagogy, and complexification of society’s education needs.

Ed-tech startupsWith transformations already underway in news, music, videos/movies, startup gold rush now turning focus to education

2013: The year of the anti-MOOC

Ian Bogost, Georgia Institute of Technology

(Brief interlude, aka rant)

We (faculty) have lost the narrative

Education=employment

Basic research=devalued

Market forces and competition drive education’s future

The day Coursera became mortal

A little bit about change models

Kuhn: accumulation of anomalies, create “phase changes” (sorry, hate the ‘p’ word):

dramatic change, alteration of core premises, development of a framework to account for sub-changes

Carlota Perez: techno-economic change

So, together with this guy

www.downes.ca

and this guy

http://davecormier.com/

2008, 2009, 2011

To unchain students from curriculum and syllabi and foster creativity

Distributed content and conversations

“…the fundamental task of education is to enculturate youth into this knowledge-creating civilization and to help them find a place in it…traditional educational practices – with its emphasis on knowledge transmission – as well as newer constructivist methods both appear to be limited in scope if not entirely missing the point”

Scardamalia and Bereiter (2006, Cambridge Handbook of Learning Sciences)

When systems are distributed, alternative modes of integration are needed

Stasser-Titus (1985)

Challenge then is to create a new integrated whole

Social and academic connection to the university

Boyer (1987), Tinto (1993)

Psychological sense of community:“Acknowledged interdependence”

Sarason (1974)

To integrate the university more deeply with the knowledge needs of our society

Me (2013)

Disruptor? Saviour? Distractor?

Twitter/Gmail: gsiemens