Online Pedagogy Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

The proliferation of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) is no doubt one of the most talked about and debated educational phenomena of this past decade (e.g., Friedman, 2012; Hyman, 2012; Yuan & Powell, 2013), and it is at the core of many of these discussions where we situate our argument. The hype surrounding MOOCs pushes educators to think critically about the purposes and structures of traditional education, both residential and online; structures which some types of MOOC of this time period are replicating. In addition, open online courses are remarkably easy to access, providing a free educational opportunity for anyone who has the resources and skills necessary to participate in a networked environment. The disruptive, or revolutionary, potential of MOOCs in higher are often tied to notions of educational equity. However, as Farmer (2013) argued, there is not yet sufficient evidence to suggest that MOOCs "are a '[d]isruptive [i]nnovation' that will resolve issues of access and cost" in higher education. First, as Bali (2014) noted, MOOCs are " the next logical step " in the evolving landscape of online education (p. 44), which is important to consider in our discussions on the potential and future of MOOCs. We believe ignoring this opens the doors to misinterpretation of the MOOC phenomenon (i.e., the hype about MOOCs) and misinforms the potential trajectories of open online courses. Second, classifying MOOCs as a single entity is problematic, as there are significant variations in MOOCs in terms of educational vision and overall course structure (Bali, 2014; Bayne & Ross, 2014; Ross, Sinclair, Knox, Bayne & Macleod, 2014). Third, we argue that issues of access and equity cannot be addressed simply by putting free content on the web. In order for learners to benefit from this educational opportunity, to be full participants, and to take advantage of these free offerings, they need, at the very least, to have a certain level of proficiency in various literacies, and to be self-motivated. These are, by and large, traits generally acquired through formal education. Finally, there is a need to further examine the meaning of disruption in education. We argue that real change in education is a collective effort that evolves as a result of the interaction between social, economic, political, and cultural realities of a society or community. In other words, education as a public good is not as flexible a domain as consumer products or services to be "disrupted" as a result of a single action, product, or philosophy (Kim, 2010; Knoll, 2009). Instead, we propose to direct our attention to innovations that are much smaller in scale: pedagogical innovations that may go unnoticed in everyday practice. We believe the future success of open online courses lies in how well we foster meaningful and memorable learning experiences through effective pedagogies and learning design. Yet, as Bayne and Ross (2014) argued, " [pedagogy] has been noticeably under-represented " in the MOOC discourse (p. 4). Furthermore, teachers' roles in MOOCs are " both significant and neglected " (2014, p. 18). In this chapter, we build on Bayne and Ross's (2014) call for a need to focus on MOOC pedagogy as a highly visible, demanding, situated, and emergent practice by examining and building from the construct of teaching presence. We start from looking at teaching presence as creating a meaningful and receptive relationship with learners. We also place a spotlight on the diversity of teacher roles in openly networked environments. We then discuss the notion of " learners as teachers " and how this reframing calls for a reconsideration of these two distinct presences: learner presence and teacher presence. Reconsidering these two, we then add to this a third presence that