How goes the revolution?: Three themes in the shifting MOOC landscape (original) (raw)

Since the rise to prominence of the MOOC platform organisations in 2012, over 4500 courses have been offered to date (Online Course report, 2016). However, despite the claims of innovation, disruption and revolution that continue to drive MOOC hyperbole, the general understanding of learning in MOOCs remains somewhat conventional, and certainly undertheorised. Assumptions about MOOC learning remain differentiated around the 'xMOOC' and 'cMOOC' terms, supposedly defining a centralised platform model, and a more distributed networked arrangement respectively. In this version of events, the platform MOOC facilitates the broadcast of prestigious educational content to a 'massive' population of viewers, while the more experimental 'connectivist' (cMOOC) courses foreground self-direction and autonomy, and eschew traditional notions of the teacher and the educational institution. These opposing ideas have tended to characterise MOOC learning in terms of audience behaviour (in the xMOOC), or student-driven network creation (in the case of the cMOOC). Put differently, the MOOC story is either about university lecturers teaching greater numbers of students with identical HOW GOES THE REVOLUTION? THREE THEMES IN THE SHIFTING...