The importance of Openness and MOOCs
“Openness is the breath of life for education and research. Resources created by educators and researchers should be open for anyone to use and reuse. Ultimately this argument resonates with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states: ‘Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages” (United Nations, 1948, Art. 26, para. 1). D’Antoni and Savage (2009, p. 138)
There is no doubt that OER (Open Educational Resources) and MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course) have disrupted the traditional classroom settings. Never in our lifetimes have courses, resources and information been so readily available to us. The first MOOC, offered by Stephen Downes and George Siemens at the University of Manitoba in 2008 (Downes, 2017), was not simply to change the access to learning by making it freely available to all but also to change the experience of learning.
MOOCs are significant to all current teaching and learning because they provide opportunities for flexible lifelong learning, are designed to be accessible to everyone and cover an immense range of topics and interests. (Green et al., 2015; Missopoulos et al., 2018 as cited in Henderikx et al., 2019) Previously to the global pandemic, there were claims that MOOCs were dying and that they were overhyped technology (Warner, 2017). However, EdSurge (2020) states that 2020 was MOOC’s most consequential year since 2012 which, has been coined the year of the MOOC. A report by Class Central, a company that tracks MOOCs, found that one-third of learners that ever registered to take a MOOC joined in 2020 (Shah, 2020). Coursera, the largest MOOC, had four times the number of users, moving from 8 million in 2019 to 31 million in 2020, a rise of 387 percent (Schaffhauser, 2021).
Interestingly I was somewhat part of this statistic as I enrolled in a Domestika course during the lockdown in 2020. According to (Belanger & Thornton, 2013 as cited in Cha & So. 2020), there are a variety of motivations to take a MOOC, to gain more knowledge of a particular topic, to explore a field of interest, to participate in social interactions and to have a fun and enjoyable experience without any expectation of achievement and completion. These motivations were true for me because, at this time, I needed some creative outlet for the stress of lockdown juggling work life, family life and study at home. Ironically, when I enrolled in the course, we came out of lockdown two weeks later, and it has since been on my to-do list. By exploring Openness while incorporating this course, I hope to have a more in-depth learning experience.
MOOCs are unlike regular face-to-face or other online courses in the sense that they are incredibly heterogeneous in terms of ages, education level, native languages, prior knowledge and reasons for enrolment (Doo et al., 2020). Because of all these factors, open networks mean that there are different types of engagement and ideally a shift to more learner-centred approaches to teaching. Educators and MOOC instructors have had to adopt other pedagogical practices and be as inclusive to their learners as possible while managing not only a vast group of learners but a very diverse one (Czerniewicz et al., 2017).
For the learners, it has also meant that they have had to adapt to a more self-directed learning style. In general, MOOCs do not have the same deadlines and teacher focused motivational aspects, creating a more flexible learning environment. While the Openness and flexibility of MOOCs sound like a utopia for learners, they are also well known for their incompletion rates and many of the students not succeeding in pursuing their personal learning goals (Green et al., 2015; Missopoulos et al., 2018, as cited in Henderikx et al., 2019).
Although MOOCs are not a new phenomenon, I realised that I had not actually participated in one. In my inquiry I want to explore the structure of a MOOC and the learning opportunities such as participation and course completion. Initially, I was not entirely convinced whether it was worth enrolling in one, especially for an informal crafting course. There are many free and accessible videos on YouTube, so why should someone choose to do a ‘formal’ informal course instead.
On commencing my inquiry, I viewed videos on the art of craft and embroidery on YouTube. I found this ‘how to video’ on YouTube but found that while it was interesting and informative, the content was confusing, with a large amount of talking about unrelated topics.
While YouTube and its accessibility and extensive content is undoubtedly an ever-popular educational tool, it is not without its limitations. I discovered that there are very talented people making videos, and the list is far-reaching. Still, many of these people, it seems, are demonstrating their knowledge rather than creating a space for people to learn. Some of the videos are very long, with a lot of discussion instead of explaining how to do something. Using YouTube as an educational resource, it is often necessary to sift through inaccurate or inappropriate content to find exactly what you need to learn. Furthermore, the sideline content, such as comments or related videos, can be distracting.
Virginia Forbes Learning Design Portfolio 