gpmt

The scooped article reviews a book edited by Lucila Carvalho and Peter Goodyear. It contains a collection of stories on networked learning that share the intention to look at learning networks as designed entities. As one of the contributors to the book I should say no more about it and let Terry Anderson’s review speak for itself. However, if his review does wet your appetite I should perhaps confess that I myself am quite enamoured with the collection of articles that has emerged. I genuinely belief this book, to which I only made a very small contribution, marks an important step in the efforts to come up with a theoretical foundation for networked learning. @pbsloep

Terry Anderson is always worth a read. Productive learning networks seem to be very relevant to our current interactions on ocTEL

And so Crispin Weston goes on to attack MOOCs, Learning Analytics and Open Educational Resources. After discussing each bubble, including why it is destined to pop, he discusses the question of what is needed to make the innovation that each bubble foreshadows, last.

Weston makes several sensible observations, such as "an academic education is not equivalent to a trip to the public library, digital or otherwise", or learning "analytics is predicated on 'big data' but in education, big data will not exist until we sort out the current failure of interoperability", or with Open Education Resources "the quality of the resources themselves and the pedagogies they represent are poor." However, these observations lead to incoherent arguments, in the case of Learning Analytics to downright insinuating ones. His arguments do not attempt to represent the complexity of the situation that surrounds each of these educational innovations. Rather they serve one purpose, portraying the innovation as a bubble. 

Weston's arguments lack subtlety to the degree that there seems to be an agenda underlying them, and indeed there is one. It is that research should be taken out of the hands of academics and public funding bodies to make place for "proper R&D that is commercially-funded and responds to market requirements." There is of course nothing wrong with companies getting involved in R&D. Indeed, in EU framework projects always commercial parties participate in the research consortia that are set up. But it is too simplistic to portray research done by companies as proper and all the rest as improper.

With Weston I have my doubt and worries about MOOCs, Learning Analytics and OERs. They have bubble-like qualities in that researchers and educational administrators seem too uncritically adopt them. Uncritically adopting technological innovations in education actually happens quite often. And industry has more than once played a dubious role in this, see what Todd Oppenheimer in his Flickering Mind writes about the money that was wasted on the introduction of computers in K-12 education. The conclusion should be that a discussion about innovations such as MOOCs, Learning Analytics, Open Educational Resources, e-Portfolios, Serious Games, Adaptive Learning systems should never be guided by political agendas such as boosting commercial research. There is enough to worry about as it is. What really gets me worried is the idea that the venture capitalists that fund the MOOCs are going to determine the destiny of Higher Education; precisely because they think commercially and respond to market requirements only.

Although posted already a week ago, this is too important a scoop to miss. According to Phil Hill, Coursera's moving into the courseware business is a reflection of a number of different things. First, according to Coursera's Daphne Koller it is prompted by their desire to cater more for HE students' initial education than for professionals who seek to develop themselves. But speculates Phil Hill, another dominant reason could be the desire of the venture capitalists to find a revenue model. Courseware is like books, it allows universities to use them and turn them into genuine course by putting a wrapper around them, i.e. by assigning teachers to them, fitting them into a curriculum, giving credits for them. 

Courseware as a notion is at least 20 years old (see my previous Scoop http://sco.lt/4k2TeD). In that sense, Coursera's move is a step back. It brings MOOCs back into the fold of HE as we know it; the claim that MOOCs are a disrupting innovation that makes obsolete almost all universities but a few elite ones (as suggested by among others Sebastian Thrun) immediately falls flat. To me, this is a very welcome move, one that removes the hype and gives us back a sense of proportion, enough to let educational professionals (rather than news papers and Silicon Valley gurus) decide on how MOOCs are going to be useful to improve education across the globe. (@pbsloep)

A step for chasing profit

The discussion on what MOOCs are continuous, this post by George Siemens sums up some key elements: the ideological difference between x-MOOCs and c-MOOCs, MOOC as a platform, the issue of scaling (massive content duplication, not massive teacher support), and a comment by Rory McGreal to the effect that Open Universities have been doing MOOC-like stuff for ages already. (@pbsloep)