The Diversity of MOOCs1

Leonard J. Waks, Temple University

My aim is to move the discussion of MOOCs rom

overgeneralized judgments and pro-MOOC vs. anti-MOOC arguments,

and toward informed critical judgments of particular MOOCs.

1. The question “Are MOOCs good?” is a bit like the question “Are

Books good?”

At first the latter question – “are books good?” seems silly

– we are inclined to answer that “some are good and others are

awful.” Few would condemn books tout court.

When we are considering printed books, however, one group -

the medieval scribes – did condemn them all. A cynic might say

that the scribes saw the handwriting on the wall – that printed

books would end the demand for their services. The scribes made a

less self-serving argument: that mechanical production, by

removing the human heart and hand, would suck the life out of

books. And anyone who has seen medieval illuminated manuscripts 1 Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Philosophy of Education Society, Albuquerque NM, March 2014. I have made only modest modifications to the presented paper.

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knows that they had a point. Something valuable, something

inherently human, was lost. But how many illuminated books have

you read lately? Mechanical print won and scribes lost because

print books answered to too many needs and interests.

And so we now turn to MOOCs. There are many today who

condemn MOOCs. The critics are concentrated in the academy. A

good example is Jonathan Rees, the professor, blogger and Salon

columnist who proclaims himself as the knight protecting the

academy against MOOCs.2 Cynics might argue that academics like

Rees are merely protecting their turf and revenue stream, but

like many other academics, Rees puts up a different argument:

that MOOCs, by mechanizing instruction and removing the human

heart and hand, suck the life out of learning. Like the scribes,

he has a point. But I would not be too quick to place myself in

the same losing position as the medieval scribes. The mechanical

scaling up of instruction, like the mechanical scaling up of book

printing, simply answers to too many needs and interests and its

spread in some form is all but inevitable. 2 See Rees’ Blog, More or Less Bunk, online at http://moreorlessbunk.wordpress.com/

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2. The Origin of MOOCs

Many distinct objects are considered under the MOOC heading.

Once we see how diverse the objects are, the less likely we will

be to over-generalize in our evaluations. Before turning that

point, I first need to say a few words about the origin of MOOCs

and the MOOC acronym itself.

In the early 2000s two Canadian researchers and educational

designers, George Siemans and Stephen Downes, developed a new

learning theory, connectionism, which was intended to challenge

both behavioral and constructivist learning theories. To

oversimplify, connectionism, like Dewey’s experimentalism and

many feminist models of teaching and learning, emphasized the

social nature of learning – that learning, understanding and

knowing are a matter of participating collectively in communities

of practice. We speak, perhaps a bit vaguely, of e.g., “what

biologists have learned about genetics.” Connectionists assert

that connected communities – e.g. biologists – are the literal

subjects of learning; individuals learn – only in a secondary

sense – by being members and participants and contributors of

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connected communities. Connectionists attacked the learning

theory of constructivism for its individualist bias – “the

individual constructing his own knowledge”.

In 2008 Siemans and Downes designed a connectivist learning

experience, a course on connectivism at the University of

Manitoba. They designed it to demonstrate key connectivist

principles. With 25 resident students and 2200 students

participating for free online, they offered some initial lectures

which were videotaped and made available online, and then

connected their students online and set them to work on

exercises and projects. Small working groups formed and

communicated via Facebook, Twitter, and other social and

collaborative tools. The small working groups made their findings

available to the entire connected community. Dave Cormier,

another Canadian researcher, dubbed this course a MOOC – a

massive, open, online course.

3. What are MOOCs?

Today there are a number of distinct educational formats

brought together under the MOOC banner. To gain some clarity, 4

let’s work toward a definition by clarifying each term in the

acronym.

Starting with M, and given that the key driver of MOOCs is

the interest in scaling up instruction and reducing or

eliminating tuition fees, it is best to think of “massive” not in

terms of specific numbers (e.g., more than 1,000 students) but

rather in terms of underlying technologies that render the

marginal cost of additional students, no matter how many, close

to zero. In MOOCs, once fixed costs have been expended,

subsequent actions are handled mechanically and routinely by

computer software.

The first O, for “open,” has come to mean “available at no

cost to anyone with an Internet connection.” Significantly, this

is not the sense of “open” in “open source”. While the materials

in some MOOCs are indeed offered as open source, and are freely

available for re-use and mix-ups, most MOOC-based materials are

proprietary and cannot be used without a license.

The second O, for “online,” means that the course can be

undertaken and completed at an Internet computer terminal or 5

mobile device. This does not imply that MOOCs cannot be used in

blended experiences. But if off-line aspects are needed for MOOC

completion, the course is not a true MOOC.

Finally, let’s consider C, for course. A rough definition

may go like this – a course is a selection of subject matters

sequenced for completion within a given period of time.

Completion generally is achieved by satisfying pre-determined

completion criteria: e. g., so many classes attended or work

assignments completed; Grades may be determined by scores on

quizzes, exams and projects. MOOCs were designed as courses

because they aimed to duplicate conventional college courses.

More recently, the MOOC developers have acknowledged that most

MOOC users already possess diplomas, and are using MOOCs to gain

advanced professional knowledge or for adult continuing

education. These users generally do not seek certificates of

completion, and indeed rarely complete the courses. So there has

been some movement away from patterning MOOCs on college courses.

4. Dimensions of Pedagogy

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Instruction in courses typically involves three inter-acting

dimensions: didactic, discursive and heuristic. The didactic

dimension conveys knowledge through lectures and textbook

readings; the discursive facilitates understanding through

discussion and critical feedback; the heuristic shapes skills

through drill and practice.

In a geometry unit, for example, the didactic component may

present basic concepts such as line, plane, axiom or proof; the

discursive component may provide opportunities for discussion of

e.g., proof strategies; the heuristic component may provide

multiple opportunities to e.g., determine the area or perimeter

of figures, to invent proofs, or to construct bi-sections of line

segments. In a literature unit, the didactic may convey

background knowledge on the author, genre or period, the

discursive may provide opportunities for discussions of a

selected story, and the heuristic may provide opportunities to

use strategies of analysis, e.g., to locate the protagonist, the

central conflict, and the dénouement.

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Good instruction provides for the development and

integration of knowledge, understanding and skill. It aims to

engage students into worthwhile activities and practices by

melding “I know,” and “I understand,” with “I can do.” When we

think in general terms about the evaluation of particular MOOCs,

we want to ask how well these instructional dimensions can be

handled through computer software. I’ll return to this in a

moment.

4. MOOCs and their Cousins

I want to focus on evaluation of so-called “x-MOOCs”,

MOOCs organized on the platforms of the ‘big three’ provider

firms: edX, Udacity and Coursera and similar platforms now

spreading all over the world. Such x-MOOCs use learning

management system (LMS) software to manage course functions from

attendance to grading. To maintain this focus, x-MOOCs must be

distinguished from close relatives, such as c-MOOCs, DOCCs and

SPOCs.

C-MOOCs – those built on connectivist the principles

described above - disavow LMSs; they do not mechanize instruction8

with self-enclosed dedicated software systems. Instead, they rely

upon creative uses of existing social tools such as Facebook,

Twitter and Skype. Moreover, c-MOOCs are “courses” only in an

extended sense; much of the learning grows out the unpredicted

experiences of their working groups. Each group ends up with

distinct learning outcomes. Siemans has urged that c-MOOCs are

not competitors to or replacements for regular courses, and it is

not hard to see why – they are not courses at all – at least in

the conventional sense of experiences sequenced for completion on

the basis of determinate criteria. C-MOOCs are related only

tangentially to x-MOOCs.

DOCCs and SPOCs, on the other hand, are real courses. DOCCs

are “distributed open collaborative courses.” In a DOCC a faculty

group is gathered from several institutions, and collaboratively

selects and organizes subject matters and presents them online.

But then the faculty members return to their home institutions

and each develops a course around the collaborative kernel that

is open only to its (fee paying) students.

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A good example is the course on “feminism and technology”

created by members of women’s studies programs at 17 colleges and

universities. The faculty developed the lectures, interviews,

panels and core readings and made them available online for all.

These components made up the didactic kernel, but all faculty

members built distinct courses around them at their home

institutions. The DOCC was not massive, open nor predominantly

online.3

SPOCs are “small, private, online courses.” In a SPOC a

videotaped didactic kernel is presented to small groups of

classroom students, and supplemented with discursive and

heuristic instruction. In one example Prof. Khosrow Ghadiri at

San Jose State took the road rejected by his philosophy

colleagues and built his circuits and electronics course around

edX president Anant Agarwal’s MOOC. Students watched Agarwal’s

lectures at home. Ghadiri devoted the first part of each class

reviewing the parts that gave students the most difficulties.

Then the students broke into groups of three to solve problems 3 Scott Jaschik, Feminist Anti-MOOC, Inside Higher Education, August 19, 2013. Online at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/08/19/feminist-professors-create-alternative-moocs#ixzz2vD8KKlAu 

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together. The putative advantage of such a “flipped” classroom

design is that it leaves more time in the classroom for heuristic

teaching. Students in Ghadiri’s flipped classroom sections

performed better than those in his optional unflipped sections –

his pass rate rose from 59% to 91%. 4

Stanford University president John Hennessey has recently

breathed new energy into SPOCs, dropping his support for MOOCs

(Stanford has been one of the leading producers of both MOOC

software and courses), and declaring that two letters in “MOOC” –

M for massive and O for open, are “wrong.” 5 In SPOCs “massive”

and “open” are explicitly discarded, and the online component

serves merely as the didactic kernel. SPOCs are not MOOCs,

though they may use MOOCs – or other online or video resources -

for their didactic segments.

4 Nina Shapiro, Astonishing MOOC Success More Complicated than it Seemed, Raising Questions for UW, Seattle News Weekly,  September 10, 2013, available online at http://www.seattleweekly.com/home/948803-129/class-students-mooc-online-says-ghadiri

5 Andrew Hill and Richard Waters, Online ‘MOOC’ Courses are too big to work, says Stanford head, Financial Times, February 2, 2014, online at http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/e711c690-8c2a-11e3-bcf2-00144feab7de.html#axzz3Vi8emV00

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5. The Educational Value of x- MOOCs

A lot of the criticism of MOOCs derives from the fear that

SPOCs based on “superstar” online professors like Agarwal, will

replace local faculty, especially in lower tier institutions.

Low-paid contingent faculty and teaching assistants (or worse,

software programs and auto-graders) will then handle the

heuristic teaching and grading, leaving fee paying students

without expert human guidance.

Here is Jonathan Rees:

If you carry the hierarchical, every-student-for-

themselves assumptions inherent in an xMOOC into the

future you will never escape the reasons why so many

caring educators oppose MOOCs in the first place. . .

The problem with MOOCs isn’t the name. It’s not even

the components of the acronym. The problem with MOOCs

is that they’re being designed to create low-quality,

hierarchical courses that can be championed by

unscrupulous administrators to fire caring professors

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and leave unsuspecting students to fend entirely for

themselves.

Rees appears to be arguing here against SPOCs, not MOOCs.

But let’s take up that part of his argument directed to the

quality problems “inherent” in MOOCs. Rees says:

Cosmetic changes will not solve (MOOC quality)

problems. Only re-thinking the entire xMOOC experience

from the ground up will have even the slightest chance

of creating something worthwhile.6

The problem here is Rees’s false choice between merely “cosmetic”

changes vs. “rethinking MOOCs from the ground up”. Rees’s dualism

neglects that huge area of actual or potential positive

developments within the existing x-MOOC framework. Rees would

almost certainly know about these if he took a break from general

critique to explore particular MOOCs. I’ll turn to this task

below.

6 Rees, The MOOC don’t work ’cause the vandals took the handles, online at

http://moreorlessbunk.wordpress.com/2014/02/11/the-mooc-dont-work-cause-the-vandals-took-the-handles/

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First, we can dismiss Rees’ unsupported claim about what

MOOC designers intend. Have x-MOOCs been “designed to create low

quality courses”. On the contrary, their designers seek to create

high quality courses, as they understand them, with instruction

better than they perceive to be today’s norm. Indeed Agarwal has

made it the highest priority of edX to use the huge data sets

available in computerized courses with tens or hundreds of

thousands of students to improve instruction and learning. MOOCs

may nonetheless be low quality courses, of course, but that is

another question and would have to be addressed on relevant

terms.

Have MOOCs been “designed to suit the needs of unscrupulous

administrators?” Agarwal, Koller, Ng and the other platform

designers have had quite different aims – to scale up instruction

and make quality higher education globally available. While this

may also result in substitution of technology for labor in

already existing universities, it hardly follows that that was

the intended result. The MOOC founders’ early statements all

referred to creating opportunities for students lacked access to

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higher education. In any case is not a critique of MOOC

instruction itself. It is no critique of a hammer that an

imbecile can use it to bash in someone’s head. It might

nonetheless be a very good hammer.

Evaluating Particular MOOCs

So let’s consider the tasks of instruction - didactic,

discursive, and heuristic - in actual MOOCs. Rees and other

academic critics have condemned MOOCs as in effect using the best

of 21st century technology to deliver the worst of 19th century

instruction. The lectures, they claim, are merely videotaped

talking heads. The discussion boards are useless and riddled with

spam and flame wars. The problem sets are repetitive, trivial,

and exhausting. In short, MOOCs are poor tools for didactic,

discursive, and heuristic dimensions of instruction.

But is that so? I will consider each of the three dimensions

of instruction, with specific examples.

(1) Didactic Instruction. While MOOC critics may wish to portray

live classroom instruction as akin to Mark Hopkins dialoguing

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with a few students on a log,7 the reality is generally quite

different: faculty members serving up uninspiring lectures to

halls full of disengaged students. If talking heads are the

problem, academic critics are in no position to pin the blame on

MOOCs.

MOOC presentations, however, are not in general talking

heads. On the contrary, MOOC presentations are an entirely new

form of pedagogical experience. The large data sets and the rich

data trails of computerized instruction have enabled researchers

to explore new questions, such as the optimum length for lecture

segments, and the most effective way of articulating them with

readings and problem sets. Research suggests that 6 minutes is

optimal. MOOCs now typically break up brief lecture segments with

problem sets and free-response questions. Lecture segments are

supplemented with interviews, clips from panels at research

conferences, interviews with other scholars, research

7 President James A. Garfield, a student of Hopkins at Williams College, is said to have defined an ideal college as "Mark Hopkins on one end of a log anda student on the other". University historian Frederick Rudolph has stated: "no one can properly address himself to the question of higher education in the United States without paying homage in some way to the aphorism of the logand Mark Hopkins".

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presentations by graduate students, and on-site videos of

knowledge use in ‘real-world’ settings. While a single instructor

inevitably gives his course subject matters a personal twist,

MOOCs offer unique opportunities for presenting multiple points

of view.

Jonathan Haber, who constructed a complete college education

in the humanities– in a single year - from MOOCs - and thus

knows as much about actual MOOCs as any commentator, states:

MOOCs are often criticized for just transferring a

“sage on stage” pedagogy from the lectern to the

computer screen, scaling up the worst aspects of

oversized lecture classes. But as my year of MOOCs went

on, I saw a new visual language developing, as single

talking heads were supplemented (or replaced entirely)

with conversations among colleagues (the visual style

of one of my favorite courses: HarvardX’s ‘Ancient

Greek Hero’), interviews with experts, on-location

shots, and even on-screen performances. Such creativity

helped to make lectures one of the most engaging and,

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ironically, intimate components of massive online

courses, while also raising the bar for all other forms

of online learning (most of it far duller than your

average MOOC).8

At their best, MOOC presentations are as engaging as the

best television news magazine programs. And this is not

surprising, as the universities providing the best MOOCs are

investing in cutting-edge production studios and hiring media

professionals. The best MOOC presentations are more like segments

of “60 minutes” than talking heads. We may question whether

producing “edutainment” of this sort is the best use of scarce

institutional funds, but that is another question entirely, and

one that completely undercuts the “talking head” line of attack.

(2) Discussion and Feedback. Let’s acknowledge that the MOOC

discussion boards are far from adequate substitutes for live

discussion. Even some of the most supportive MOOC commentators

have found them to have little value. The good news is that the

8 Haber, MY Year of MOOCs, Slate, February 2, 2014, online at http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2014/02/degree_of_freedom_project_earning_a_one_year_b_a_through_moocs.single.html

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discursive segments of many MOOCs have moved well beyond the

discussion boards to live conversations in physical or virtual

spaces.

Coursera has sponsored “meet-ups” – where students in their

MOOCs can get together for course discussion - in dozens of

cities. Coursera has also teamed up with the U. S. State

Department to run MOOC camps for college age students in many

countries. The city of Boston has teamed up with edX to initiate

Boston-x, a project providing Internet computers and meeting

places for MOOC learners. Libraries are eagerly providing

learning spaces for MOOC learners. 9 Other cities have emulated

Boston-x, dedicating space in libraries and other public

buildings for MOOC study. The New York Public Library system, for

example, has teamed up with Coursera to create MOOC social

learning spaces in several library branches. 10

9 Merideth Schwartz, Massive Open Opportunity: Supporting MOOCs in Public and Academic Libraries, Library Journal, March 2013, online at http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2013/05/library-services/massive-open-opportunity-supporting-moocs/#_ 10 Matt Enis, NYPL partners with Coursera, Library Journal, May 7, 2014, online athttp://lj.libraryjournal.com/2014/05/ed-tech/nypl-partners-with-coursera/

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These efforts parallel those of the Library 2.0 movement;

librarians around the world are now re-thinking optimal uses for

their brick and mortar building spaces in the age of web 2.0

technologies and digital books, and one answer is meeting spaces

for online learners. 11 C-MOOCs, and now many x-MOOCs well, make

extensive use of video-conferencing – e.g., via Skype - to

connect group members. MOOCs offering nothing more than

discussion boards are simply behind the MOOC curve.

(3) Heuristic Instruction. Academic critics claim that the “can

do” element of MOOCs is restricted to monitoring auto-or- peer

graded problem sets.

Many actual MOOCs, however, have moved way beyond such

mechanized problem sets, making project-based authentic learning

central to the MOOC experience. Here are two examples:

(1) At the University of Virginia’s Darden School of

Business, Professor Michael Lenox has offered several iterations 11 See Casey, Michael & Savastinuk, Laura, Library 2.0: A Guide to Participatory Library Service, Information Today Press, 2007. From Wikipedia: “In Library 2.0 … focusis on user-centered change and participation in the creation of content and community. The concept of Library 2.0 borrows from that of Business 2.0 and Web 2.0 and follows some of the same underlying philosophies.”

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of his “Foundations of Business Strategy” MOOC on the Coursera

platform. Lenox uses “Coursolve,” a crowdsourcing software

program, to connect his course with partner organizations where

students work to solve real-life challenges. “Entrepreneurs

don’t always have the resources to hire external support to

address their needs, but we’ve seen firsthand that students are

hungry for the chance to apply their knowledge to real-world

problems,” Lenox says. “By collaborating with organizations,

students can strengthen their skills development while

potentially providing businesses and nonprofits with valuable

insights.”

In the final course project, Lenox invited students to

undertake complete a strategic analysis of one of the partner

organizations. More than 400 students completed analyses in

partnership with 100 different organizations, including

established businesses, startups, resource-strapped nonprofits

and social enterprises. 12 78% of those students ended up

12 University of Virginia Darden Strategy MOOC Offers Student Support for For-Profit and Non-Profit Organizations, University of Virginia Darden School of Business, Media. August 14, 2013, online at http://www.darden.virginia.edu/web/Media/Darden-News-Articles/2013/UVa-Darden-

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participating directly with senior managers in the strategic

decision-making of their organizations. Reporting on the second

iteration of the MOOC, Lenox added, “Hundreds of in-person study

groups formed in over 50 countries. Students included young

entrepreneurs and mature small business owners; non-profit

organizers; a study group of Mongolia students led by a Peace

Corps volunteer; a group of unemployed women in Ohio looking to

improve their job prospects; a group of students in Bolivia led

under a program from the U.S. State Department; and a group of

Arab and Israeli students participating through the YaLa Young

Leaders program building détente through education.”13

(2) Cathy Davidson of Duke University is now offering a

Coursera MOOC on 'the history and future of higher education'.

Davidson has been a national leader in pushing the x-MOOC format

Strategy-MOOC-Offers-Student-Support-to-For-Profit-and-Nonprofit-Organizations/

13 Michael Lenox, 'More' Not 'Or': Fear And Loathing The World Of MOOCs, Forbes, January 9, 2014, online at http://www.forbes.com/sites/darden/2014/01/09/more-not-or-fear-and-loathing-the-world-of-moocs/

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in creative directions. Because her MOOC has many thousands of

students, the student group can take on projects not possible

within a classroom context. In one project, her students are

collectively creating a rich, multi-media trans-national timeline

of higher education since 1800. Each student is contributing

reports on significant historical events in higher education in

their geographic locations - countries, states, municipalities.

The students are learning historical research methods and skills

in reporting historical events. Many higher education

institutions previously neglected by historians of education,

including those long closed, are in this way being entered for

the first time in an accessible historical record. The student

group is now collaborating on editing and coordinating the

information and producing the final online product. 14

One does not need to love either of these particular skill

development efforts to recognize that they go way beyond auto-

graded problem sets.

14 Davidson lays out her plan for this course and its rationale in an interview available online at http://degreeoffreedom.org/interview-with-cathy-davidson/

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6. Conclusion

My point in the above remarks has been to show that academic

critics of MOOCs have relied on a stick-figure caricature. Real

MOOCs, even x-MOOCs, are diverse, and many have addressed the

didactic, discursive and heuristic dimensions of instruction in

creative ways. The best MOOCs replace the ‘sage on the stage’

stalking head with presentations employing a “new visual

language” of instruction; they build in group experiences,

whether physical or virtual, with opportunities for interpersonal

student dialogue; they make project-based learning the

centerpiece of the educational experience.

Of course, not all MOOCs do this. Some do, some don’t. And

that is the point. If we want to assess the pedagogical value of

MOOCs, we will have to turn our attention to particular courses

to see how they handle instructional tasks. By analyzing the most

important dimensions of instruction, the didactic, discursive and

heuristic, I have provided what I hope to be useful pegs upon

which to hang such particular evaluative judgments.

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