Jim Groom linked to a Dickinson quote that resonated with me:

“Whenever a thing is done for the first time, it releases a little demon.” — Emily Dickinson

— Jim Groom (@jimgroom) March 4, 2013

The problem with writing a book is that getting to the point of releasing a little demon is long and painful. Bonnie, Dave, and I have been grappling with the narrative super-structure of the book. We are well aware that by the time this is published, the MOOC landscape will look very different from what it does today. MOOCs are already moving into the realm of unloved step-child of education. They are becoming a proxy battle for educational philosophies: what is the role of commercial activity in higher education? How deeply should technology be integrated with teaching and learning? What can software do better than people? MOOCs represent much of the hope of open education advocates (openly accessible education) and the fears of faculty (the take over of public education by for-profits). This dichotomy is being politicized and will only get worse. In the long run, we’ll all hate MOOCs because they will reflect the failed hope of equitable and affordable access to education as well as the salivating greed of those wishing to commercialize and globalize education.

We’ve tried to make this book about changes in higher education, broadly. In our numerous Skype calls, we’ve debated how to position the book and the type of tone to take. At one point, we wanted the narrative to be one of presenting MOOCs to the masses, something like pop-culture Shirky/Tapscott/Jarvis/Gladwell. The intent of the book, in this vein, would be to provide readers with accessible language and way of thinking about MOOCs. Then we’d all be very wealthy and tremendously famous. People would routinely approach us on the streets to sign, in permanent marker, their baby’s foreheads. Or something like that.

While this approach seems logical and has resonance with the nature of public discourse around MOOCs, it doesn’t really fit our personalities or our world views.

At this stage, I’m thinking the best approach is something along the lines of complexifying education. Instead of trying to provide a neat tidy commentary of MOOCs and higher education changes, we should be provide a complex view, one that acknowledges the failure of mono-views of educational change. What we face in higher education is a far more daunting task than “let’s all run MOOCs” or “online learning is the future”. We face challenges around access, digitization of education, move to granular learning (courses to competencies), growth of startup/maker culture, for-profit presence, global learner base, reduce public funds, autonomous and informed learners, participatory learning, privacy, digital identity, power shift from institution to individual, new roles for educators in creating content and methods of teaching, and so on. The last thing we need is a light treatment of MOOCs or change in general. We need an analysis that moves away from simple answers toward complex questions. When someone is done reading this book, in fall of 2013, I’d like them to put it down and say “Wow. Something big is happening. We don’t know what to do about it. We need to raise the quality of discourse around higher education so that we can suitably respond to the dramatic and historic changes impacting the university”.

I hope we can instill in readers a desire for better questions, rather than trite answers. I’m sure others are already plotting those books and planning those TED Talks. It will mean that we won’t hit fame and fortune. Instead, I hope we’ll impact a group of nuanced thinkers, willing to tolerate ambiguity and complexity, prepared to embrace integrative and even contradictory thinking as they engage with the changed network/ecology/landscape of the ivory/silicon tower.

Our manuscript deadline for this book is approaching (2 months, really?) and the challenge of pulling together the threads of the impact of MOOCs is ramping up. How do we disentangle the differences between the impact of MOOCs and the impact of online learning or budget cuts? What relationship does the MOOC have to the OER movement? lots and lots of questions, and all we can do is keep writing I’m working on an article around the end of the topic with Valerie Irvine right now… proof that i’m thinking about it Val

MOOC as an act of curation
I was looking over the work the folks at the university of Edinburgh on Coursera, specifically the E-learning and Digital Cultures and the tidyness of the work that they had done really struck me. Each week, here’s five neatly organized videos, here’s some nice things to read, here are some more complex things you might want to engage with… all nicely arranged by topic. Or, you could say, by chapter.

Having mostly piggy backed on the encyclopedic knowledge of Downes and Siemens for the teaching of MOOCs, it’d never really struck me how much the process is really about carving out a piece of the internet. A dabble of this perspective, some papers by that person, lets get some differing opinions in here – I remember this really great video by…

If you’re lucky (and I would argue, if you’re doing it right) that curation does predate the course, but it only ramps up when the course starts. Grsshopper, Stephen’s software for newsletters, is a curation engine. It pulls together All the Things created by the participants in a course so they can be seen by anyone who wants to. Again, chopping the internet into manageable pieces.

The Edinburgh example
According to the Times Higher article from yesterday, The University of Edinburgh got 300,000 students for its Coursera courses. The article magically sets out what I have always thought was the most likely business model for MOOCs – the loss leader. In 220 words they lay out their reasoning… they currently have 2000 online students. They want to have 10000 students. One can imagine that they hope that of the 300K 8000 students not currently registered for ‘for pay’ courses at the institution will decide to pay money to have a longer relationship with their institution.

Quality of instruction/personality
This really puts the pressure on the instructors in the MOOC to represent the institution in a positive way. In order for the loss leader approach to work, the Coursera experience needs to be a positive one. I also don’t think it’s a big leap to believe that the people who are teaching the Coursera courses will also be the people teaching the ‘for pay’ courses that the institution will be hoping that students take in the future. Personal faculty brand continues to increase in importance.

Open content
Every bit of the content that i saw in the course mentioned above was open access. Due to the crazy international laws around copyright, trying to get a contract with a publisher for access to a journal for 300,000 people. At least… not under any current model. So we have maybe 100 items of open content being curated by the instructors and then seen by potentially thousands of other teachers. Important point.

The threat to journals
I see this creating a two point threat to the journal infrastructure as we know it. Current journals are either of the open access variety, where mostly unpaid academic type people take care of the work and allow every to access the material. These, i presume, will get more and more traffic due to MOOCs. The paid journals, where libraries are charged fees based on the number of times people have accessed a particular piece or based on an institutional price governed by the number of students or… well… there are a few models. Anyway these journals are not usable by MOOCs. The licensing as it is would be too weird.

Broad viewing of open access
I’ve always thought that one of the reasons that OER and open access has struggle to catch on in some circles is that many academics had particular articles and people that they were accustomed to using in their courses, and choosing to go open access would require rethinking their courses and long search times. The curation process that is a MOOC alleviates this to a great degree. Here we have a network textbook that, in our present case the fine folks at Edinburgh, have taken the effort to collect. How easy to just take it and repurpose the pieces that you need.

The brand element
The need to publish is wrapped into a pile of tangles inside the academic system, tenure promotion, institutions proving that they have impact, satisfying funders etc… If we are having giant courses with 100K people in them, however, and anyone who publishes in a closed journal is left out, that’s going to have an impact on the uh… impact. The chance to have your work viewed, your institution to be known as having influential people in it, could increasingly be a matter of whether your material is used in a MOOC.

And, as mentioned earlier, your ability to market online courses could increasingly be a question of whether you have the kind of faculty that people want to take a course with. If i’m looking to learn something about connectivism, and I see George’s name on half the things that are written about them, I’m going to be tempted to take the connectivism course with george at Athabasca. If he’d published all those things in closed journals, it seems less likely that they would get found

So whither the closed journal? They are either going to get left out of the MOOC drive, or they are going to have to change the licensing. If they are going to charge anything for the material, however, that will be taking the price of the course from ‘free’ to ‘not-free’… which is a pretty big leap no matter how much you charge. The open net, on the other hand, is licensed in a way that is perfectly setup for MOOCs. Now that we have so much public curation going on, we are not only going to be able to find more of the existing awesomeness, I’m guessing that we’ll see people releasing more and more of their stuff for free… if only so they don’t miss out.

Like traditional education institutions, identity and reputation are important in MOOCs. For providers such as Udacity, Coursera, and edX, it means that the end user experience is vital in perceptions of overall quality. If students encounter a poor course (design, video, layout), that experience casts a reputation on the overall course provider. If they can’t offer quality courses, how do we know the assessments will be good quality? Or that plagiarism is being taken seriously?

The first open course that I offered had a big impact on how I have since viewed courses. When we opened CCK08, I thought “yay us, course is now open, people will learn, it will be awesome”. While we had that experience, we also had numerous concerns and complaints about course format, design, layout, and so on. Students had a different view of what a “free course” is all about than I had at the time. I discovered that students who participated in the course added enormous value for others. While they were taking the course without fee, they were offering their personal views, opinions, and time. The fee for taking a MOOC is active participation, which in turn increases the quality of the learning experience for others. Sometimes the language around MOOCs is almost “look at our wonderful MOOC overlords and the knowledge they bestow on the masses”. MOOCs and learners need each other. The gift of free courses by MOOC providers is promptly returned by learners in the form of their contributions. The MOOC platforms are nothing without learners. The gift of our participation is as valuable as the gift of an open course.

In mid-2012, I thought Udacity was the most vulnerable MOOC provider. Coursera was signing up universities every month or so and was offering hundreds of courses. edX was very well funded, $60m, and represented two of the top universities in the world: Harvard and MIT. Udacity, in contrast, was rolling out a few courses every semester. While Sebastian Thrun was very capable of drawing media attention, the optics of momentum were with Coursera. In August, 2012, Udacity cancelled a course before it started. This was an interesting decision and one that revealed, in my opinion, that Udacity was willing to take short term pain for long term reputation as a quality provider. Udacity owns its content, Coursera is more of a platform. That means that Udacity has a better range of monetization strategies – content, teaching, platform, recognition. Coursera as a brand will rely heavily on their university partners.

OT: edX is the most exciting MOOC provider – their content is outstanding, the platform is the best of all three providers. They are not profit-driven which means they have a different range of decisions and different criteria for making them. edX doesn’t get the media love of Udacity/Coursera (there is a story in there somewhere about the self-enforcing media plays around for-profit ventures and ability to feed into the public media through those connections). It has also managed to escape many of the concerns of plagiarism and quality.

Today, Coursera faced a quality crisis as its Fundamentals of Online Education course suddenly went dark. UPDATE: Keith Devlin provides clarification in the comments about how Coursera works – i.e. it was likely the instructors decision to close the course.

There had been some course rumblings: “The course so far is a disaster, ‘a mess’ as numerous students have called it”.

Interestingly, the communication with students has been horrible:

@missoularedhead Just pulled the plug. Went for a coffee and when I cam back it was gone. Others kicked out while working in forums!

— Nigel Robertson (@easegill) February 3, 2013

We are in the early stages of MOOCs and quality processes in Coursera are still being developed. An important question to consider relates to the quality and reputation of not only the institute and Coursera:

@gsiemens Question for us all: in handling reputational anxiety for both the provider and the institution, who advocates for the instructor?

— Kate Bowles (@KateMfD) February 3, 2013

I’d add to that: who is advocating for learners who devoted a week to working through the content and suddenly had the course cancelled. How does a course make it into a system like Coursera without a quality check of technology and learning activities?

Update: email from Coursera to students: pastebin.com/RGxvuF7b

Higher education is entering a fascinating phase of experimentation with new models of teaching and learning. A good portion of this trend is driven by technology, particularly online learning and its current manic manifestation: the MOOC. Anyone with even a brief familiarity of the history of distance education (see this book for a good overview) will recognize that much of what is being touted as new has a long legacy of research and has existed in numerous forms previously. Even then, there is something uniquely new happening in education and while we don’t quite know what it is and the scope of its impact, xEducation is an attempt to understand the change drivers and the messy landscape.
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Most people are aware that the global economy is in the midst of profound changes. These changes are evident in technological advances, capital flows, globalization, increased worker mobility and employment opportunities in knowledge work, social unrest, emergence of new economies, and the decline of long established economies. Taken together, these changes reflect a “big shift” economically and socially – one that is unprecedented in the modern economy and that has significant implications for corporations, governments, and societies around the world. The next twenty years will bring an even greater pace of change as megatrends and “game changers” continue to mature.

Higher education similarly faces change drivers that are “unprecedented in scope and diversity“. In response, provincial governments are confronting the reality that the “current system is unsustainable from a financial and quality perspective”. Top tier universities that have recognized the scope of changes are responding by calling for rapid responses, citing concerns that incremental change is no longer sufficient . The university sector is facing a future where technology will play a greater role in meeting the growing knowledge needs in society.

In spite of calls for change and predictions of disruption, higher education enrolment has continued to expand globally with average annual increases of 4.6% and the total student population doubling every 15 years. This trend has accelerated since 2000. Clear evidence exists that investing in a higher education degree has significant financial rewards for individuals and families. Many societal benefits exist for higher education including better access to quality jobs, lower unemployment, and breaking the cycle of poverty.

Additionally, the nature of work is changing. The economies of developed nations are transitioning to the long-rumored knowledge economy . Jobs that require advanced education are growing while those in the traditional labour and manufacturing sector on declining. Even in markets where traditional jobs are a large part of the economy, those jobs now require higher levels of education in order for individuals to be competitive.

The centrality of higher education in preparing individuals for knowledge work is not in question. Higher education plays a critical role in revitalizing regional economies through research and knowledge growth and preparing individuals and companies for innovation. For university leaders, the challenge is one of developing and articulating a vision of education that meets the requirement of a dynamic global marketplace and an economy prefaced on intellectual work rather than traditional labour. In particular, leaders need to recognize how the changing nature of the economy requires new approaches to supporting the needs of a diversified student population. Education is no longer an event that last four years and prepares students for the workforce. Education today must account for changing profiles of students, reskilling entire workforces transitioning to knowledge work, and preparing regional and provincial economies with the capacity to compete globally.
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I grew up in a small town, Morden, Manitoba. For a variety of reasons, we didn’t have television or radio in our home. As a result, I read roughly every book in the Morden public library. I read westerns, I read about ornithology, psychology, hypnotism, tried reading Grey’s anatomy but it was a painful experience, economics, business, philosophy, and self-help. While the lack of media in my home resulted in significant cultural blind spots (the joys of discovering Knight Rider later in life), I did develop a breadth of awareness, note I didn’t say depth!, of fields and disciplines that I’m still trying to connect today. All these free floating unconnected information elements, urgently in need of connective super-structures. In the process, I developed one attribute, curiosity about everything, and lost one attribute: fear of, or intimidation of, knowledge – by reading widely, I developed a sense that every topic, every knowledge domain, can be understood with some time investment.

Yet today, I feel unprepared and unable to prepare myself for today’s learning needs. When mental capacity is exceeded by change, it’s time to adjust the emotional, namely expectations of what it means to be in control, or even knowledgeable in a networked world.

In the past 20 years, society has witnessed the greatest expansion of knowledge in human history. Yes, there were periods of rapid knowledge expansion (see this issue of the Journal of History of Ideas), but nothing that remotely resembles what is happening today. Those who trade in hype, have bold declarations:

If every image made and every word written from the earliest stirring of civilization to the year 2003 were converted to digital information, the total would come to five exabytes. An exabyte is one quintillion bytes, or one billion gigabytes—or just think of it as the number one followed by 18 zeros. That’s a lot of digital data, but it’s nothing compared with what happened from 2003 through 2010: We created five exabytes of digital information every two days. Get ready for what’s coming: By next year, we’ll be producing five exabytes every 10 minutes.

Others take a more thoughtful and research-oriented approach but still arrive at a similar conclusion: knowledge is changing, what it means to know is changing. As a result, what it means to learn is also in the process of changing. The institutions that have served us well historically are slow, even reluctant, to recognize the scope of how substantially knowledge and learning are changing.

Through the internet, we are aware of event around the world as they occur. Through our social networks, we encounter ideas, links, and resources that overwhelm us. Scientometrics has developed (.pdf) as a field of ” to describe the study of science: growth, structure, interrelationships and productivity”. Global research output, particularly in the science and technology fields, has steadily increased, particularly in developing regions of the world.

As a result of knowledge changes, many of us are in a period of constant angst about what we know and what we don’t know. It’s like we are under a dark cloud of knowledge deficiency daily. Consider the concept of networks as an example. Networks are everywhere. In a given day, it’s not uncommon to hear references to power laws, weak ties, strong ties, structural holes, and so on. We collect these unconnected bits of information. We are aware of the language of networks and might even use it in our discussions with others. For most people, however, the knowledge is shallow. Open online courses are a way to address the angst of knowledge deficiency. A Coursera course like Social Network Analysis provide an opportunity to connect the disconnected info bits that we’ve encountered over periods of time. BTW – does anyone else feel like a kid in a candy store when looking at upcoming Coursera, edx, or Udacity course offerings? I’ll take that one, and that one, and that one, and that one…

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Later today, I’ll be on a panel organized by CBC’s Ira Basen at Western University titled Digital Boon or Digital Doom?. To prepare, I was sent a list of topics that will be considered during the debate/discussion. I’m sharing my thoughts and reflections here in order to prepare for the panel.

Pedagogy: online and classroom
The truly pedantic will state that we’re really talking about andragogy (i.e. Knowles). Given prevalence of use, pedagogy is just fine for me in describing teaching and learning at any level. A common question concerning online learning is its effectiveness in contrast with traditional instruction. Underlying this question is a research or evidence plea about whether or not schools and universities should embrace and move online.

There are two ways to answer this:

1.From the research: Research evidence is clear that online or blended learning is on par with in-class learning. Here are a few papers to look at:

- Bernard et al. on How Does Distance Education Compare with Classroom Instruction (search the article on Google Scholar and you can find pdf links – the one I found asked me not to link or cite without permission. duh.) – this is a gold standard case study for students on how to do a meta-analysis. The authors clearly detail their inclusion/exclusion criteria for research papers, see p. 384 for description, and the shortcomings of quality research papers in DE. Their conclusion is that online learning can be both better and worse than in-class instruction. Asynchronous online learning produces better results than synchronous online learning. They emphasize factors such as learning design in determining whether or not the learning experience will be effective. The view that media is a delivery mechanism and doesn’t influence learning dates back to Clark’s 1983 article where he argues that “there are no learning benefits to be gained from employing any specific medium to deliver instruction”. A counter claim to this argument, by Kozma, posits that there are cognitively relevant characteristics of media and as a consequence, media matter. Cognitive relevance shares some attributes with Gibson’s notion of affordances (i.e. action potential) of tools. This debate hasn’t been resolved for a few decades and I don’t intend to resolve it here. I personally fall somewhere in the middle: design matters. So do tools.

- Means et al. on Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning – this report draws heavily from the Bernard paper and provocatively concludes (p. 18) that “online learning (whether taught completely online or blended) on average produce stronger learning outcomes than do classes with solely face-to-face instruction”. It’s a widely cited and, for some, controversial report. Well worth reviewing, however.

- Tallent-Runnels et al. (.pdf) took a broad look at the experience of teaching online, considering students experiences, outcomes, and institutional factors. They don’t provide a clear assessment of “online is better” or “in class is better”, but instead take a more complex approach by evaluating the breadth of the teaching experience. Their analysis likely won’t change anyone’s opinion, for or against, online learning, but the paper does highlight the silliness of a blanket comparison. It’s kind of like saying “is it better to fly than to drive”. Well, that depends. Where are you going? How much time do you have? Do you have a budget? Do you like driving and sightseeing? etc.

- Bowen et al. on Interactive Learning Online at Public Universities – this paper hasn’t gained the acceptance that the above papers have, partly because the sample size is not large and partly because randomized trials are tough to do well in education and many educators don’t bother diving into attempts to do so. I include it here because it is a report that focuses on interactive online learning (they include an hour a week in person). The report concludes comparable learning outcomes between online and F2F, but tout productivity gains and cost savings of online instruction (p. 2). In their conclusion, the authors acknowledge that these benefits might not carry educational improvements”across the board” (p.27) and that future gains are related to improvements in software (p. 28).

2. From context: This is an argument that will infuriate many academics, especially those that take themselves too seriously or that don’t own a computer: The internet has won. Deal with it. Work is digital. Life is digital. The question of “is online learning comparable to face-to-face learning” has been answered by society: “Who cares. We live, play, and work digitally. Might as well learn that way too”.

The University
The interest in online learning, and the prominence of online courses (MOOCs), is stunning. I have never seen a trend develop as quickly and with as little input from faculty. The faculty voice has been mute in MOOC conversations. A handful of faculty members are offering MOOCs, but as a body, faculty have been on the sidelines as the biggest educational trend of the last several decades has developed. To me, this is one of the most fascinating aspects of the MOOCs phenomenon. I’ve spoken with numerous systems that are offering MOOCs and in each instance, it was an admin or IT decision that did not include consultation with faculty senate. How is this possible? Are faculty that technology-shy that they would permit the evisceration of their practice in order to not reveal their technical phobias? I’ve stated this in other forums, but if 2012 was the year of the MOOC, 2013 will be the year of the anti-MOOC as faculty finally (hopefully) get into the conversation.

A few concerns exist beyond the lack of faculty voice. I’m concerned that education is being commodified. That MOOCs are a vehicle that will be used by corporations to take over public education. I’m concerned that the Silicon Valley way of “don’t think, just do” will produce a pedagogical model that lacks theory and ignores consideration of principles such as power, learner autonomy, and equity. I’m concerned that discoveries and pedagogical models that have been established over the past century will be ignored and the same idea, now with a new data/digital/cool-sounding name will herald a new age of “We discovered this…” (no. no ,you didn’t discover it. Read some freakin’ literature. The ideas are there already. You’re Columbus, coming into someone else’s territory).

But in spite of those concerns, I’ll keep experimenting with MOOCs. The prospect of global education, increased connectivity, and greater learner control are too tantalizing to ignore. Plus, it’s foolishness to ignore a new area of research. No doubt, there will be unintended consequences that will be negative. But creating a better model of learning, increasing access, and improving equity is more important than trying to preserve a model of the university or even the professorate that is at odds with how knowledge is generated and shared today.

What does this mean to higher education? The changes coming will be tremendous. The competition for students will be fierce. Kathleen Matheos and I did an article on the future of higher education a few years ago. Our core assertion is that society’s knowledge institutions mirror how knowledge is created and shared in a particular era. As a result, universities will begin to adopt the attributes of networks in how they teach and operation in order to stay relevant. In the process, research, teaching and learning, and assessment will be unbundled or de-coupled. This in turn will produce an ecosystem of numerous players, each addressing one aspect of what used to be the integrated higher education model. The image below was from that paper:

If you’re interested in readings/resources/discussions on the future of higher education, we ran a MOOC on this topic in fall 2012. The readings can be accessed here in Desire2Learn (click ‘content browser’).

MOOCs
Are MOOCs the future of higher education? I don’t think so. They are currently approaching hype-like status that only comes when in the throes of a fad. The term itself is quickly losing meaning as anything online and learning-related is apparently a MOOC. If you’re looking for MOOC resources, I’ve been tagging interesting articles and websites since 2011 here on Diigo. My co-author, Bonnie Stewart, has been tagging MOOC articles here on Delicious. If you don’t feel like reading hundreds of articles, Sir John Daniel provides a solid analysis of MOOCs. Don’t forget to look at the peer reviewed MOOC articles. Several colleagues have found Clay “the McGuyver of MP3 metaphors – explaining all phenomenon in the world through the lens of MP3′s and Napster since 1999″ Shirky’s evaluation of MOOCs helpful: Napster, Udacity, and the Academy.

The bigger trend to focus on is the increased role of two things in education:
1. Startups and entrepreneurs (or put another way, commercial activity): SXSWedu and ASU EdInnovation are two conferences devoted to this topic. I’m involved in organizing a conference with the tech/innovation theme in Calgary, Alberta May 1-3, 2013. The ecosystem of educational offering is being expanded, or pillared, depending on your view, by these startups. When in doubt, follow the money. The future of education is being shaped by entrepreneurs, not by professors.

2. Networked technologies and pedagogies: this has been my stomping grounds since the late 90′s. Together with colleagues like Stephen Downes, I’ve been looking at how connectedness changes learning. Connectedness is the big pedagogical innovation. Complex problems are solved by connecting expertise and knowledge. Literally, the knowledge is in the connections. As we become better connected as more of our knowledge becomes findable through social media and mobiles, networked pedagogies will grow in prominence. I’ve tagged connectivism resources here if you are interested in getting deeper into networked knowledge and learning. Google Scholar has a variety of articles as well.

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Back to where we started: most of us today live in this constant state of knowledge deficiency, feeling that we’re behind on something, don’t know enough, and need to do more learning.

This is now the norm.

Accept it.

Enjoy it.

Fortunately, learners today have terrific options for filling personal knowledge gaps or connecting information pieces that they’ve collected in their daily information interactions. MOOCs and online learning are long overdue. They benefit learners, first and foremost. Faculty and universities have a reason to be anxious. MOOC providers want to make money. They will stop being free and will start competing with universities. For those who are willing to engage in the change dialogue, it’s also a wonderful time to begin influencing the future of education. We know knowledge, learning, and higher education are changing. The best time to move the world in a direction that we want is when it is already changing.