John Connell: The Blog

.…the same three-person team of a pro­fes­sor plus assis­tants that used to teach ana­log cir­cuit design to 400 stu­dents at MIT now han­dles 10,000 online and could take a hun­dred times more.…

So said Anant Agar­wal, the com­puter sci­en­tist appointed by MIT and Har­vard this year to head edX, a $60 mil­lion joint effort (cur­rently includ­ing UC Berke­ley and the Uni­ver­sity of Texas, as well as MIT and Har­vard) to stream a col­lege edu­ca­tion over the Web, free to any­one who wants it. Their aim, in time, they say is to reach 1 bil­lion stu­dents by this means.

MIT’s Tech­nol­ogy Review has pub­lished a busi­ness report on Dig­i­tal Edu­ca­tion that includes a piece that asks, is the MOOC the great­est edtech devel­op­ment in 200 years?, and another piece that takes a strangely myopic look at the devel­op­ment of the tech­nol­ogy of the MOOC (myopic because it gives not the slight­est men­tion to those who actu­ally syn­thetized the con­cept and who coined the term itself). Given that this is in the con­text of a busi­ness report, per­haps the some­what pro­gres­sive, left-leaning, anti-corporatist incli­na­tions of many of those involved in the ori­gins of the MOOC sim­ply keeps them below the radar of those writ­ing for the Tech­nol­ogy Review. I gen­uinely hope that is not the case.

How­ever, while my ped­a­gog­i­cal sym­pa­thies are some­what closer to the MOOC’s prime movers, I also have a lot of admi­ra­tion for what the big play­ers are doing too. Cours­era and Udac­ity, as well as the likes of edX, are all non-profit social enter­prise ven­tures, and while their ped­a­gogy is pri­mar­ily a ‘knowledge-delivery’ model (as opposed to social-constructivist or con­nec­tivist model), they are very much part of a broad-based set of devel­op­ments in edu­ca­tion that, I believe, are coa­lesc­ing into a major storm that will sweep through the struc­tures and assump­tions of for­mal insti­tu­tional edu­ca­tion in the next few years. Of course, there are many other MOOCs out there too: Stephen Downes offers a recent list of inter­na­tional providers.

Agarwal’s quote at the top of this piece itself con­firms that these big MOOC providers are basi­cally tak­ing the model of deliv­ery straight out of the lec­ture halls and class­rooms of higher edu­ca­tion and onto the Web. That’s fine, so far as it goes, but it means that much (most?) of the real power of the MOOC as orig­i­nally defined, namely that knowl­edge is dis­trib­uted across a net­work of con­nec­tions, and that learn­ing there­fore con­sists of the abil­ity to con­struct and tra­verse those net­works is dissipated.

That foun­da­tion in the ped­a­gogy of the lec­ture the­atre also means, of course, that the big providers are also hop­ing to find the com­mer­cial holy grail of trusted, authen­ti­cated and secure accred­i­ta­tion via the MOOC.

Nonethe­less, it will be inter­est­ing to watch what the effect will be on all those uni­ver­si­ties across the world cur­rently licens­ing courses from the big providers. I doubt that they are licens­ing their own anni­hi­la­tion, as some of the more lurid com­men­ta­tors might sug­gest; but i do think they are has­ten­ing a mas­sive and wel­come shift in the cen­tre of grav­ity in higher edu­ca­tion globally.

The MOOC is a devel­op­ment that, like all great inno­va­tions, is a cul­mi­na­tion of inven­tions, for­ma­tions, think­ing, exper­i­men­ta­tions, mis­takes and tri­umphs that came before it; it is also like all great inno­va­tions in that it is a game-changer. The game is chang­ing in higher edu­ca­tion, and in edu­ca­tion gen­er­ally — of that there is no doubt — and while the MOOC can only be a part of that change, it is a crit­i­cal part. The MOOC will never be able to cope with all the require­ments of learn­ing and of study: there will also be a need, in some dis­ci­plines for lab work, ground work, work in the field, what­ever. But there should be lit­tle doubt that the MOOC is a major devel­op­ment in education.

So, the great­est edtech devel­op­ment in 200 years? I cer­tainly hope so!

In a piece in the Inde­pen­dent, in 2011, Gor­don Brown wrote:

.…the inter­na­tional aid sys­tem for edu­ca­tion is fail­ing the world’s children.

He was intro­duc­ing his UNESCO report — Edu­ca­tion For All: Beat­ing Poverty, Unlock­ing Pros­per­ity.

On a num­ber of occa­sions over the past 6 years I have been able to watch the work of UNESCO at close hand and in the process gained con­sid­er­able respect for the orga­ni­za­tion. In keep­ing with that, I do believe that this report is  a superb, detailed and com­pas­sion­ate sum­mary of the state of edu­ca­tion for mil­lions upon mil­lions of chil­dren across the devel­op­ing world. It offers a descrip­tion of a state of affairs that should bring shame to the rest of the world — we are fail­ing all those chil­dren very badly.

Early in the report, he states that:

No edu­ca­tion sys­tem any­where in the world is bet­ter than its teachers.

And he goes on later to say:

Teach­ers are the back­bone of any edu­ca­tion sys­tem. Ulti­mately, learn­ing is the prod­uct of what hap­pens in class­rooms through a rela­tion­ship between pupils and teach­ers. That is why no edu­ca­tion sys­tem is bet­ter than the avail­abil­ity, acces­si­bil­ity and qual­ity of the teach­ers it pro­vides, and the level of sup­port that it deliv­ers to those on the front line of edu­ca­tion in the classroom.

With I Am Learner in mind, this begs many more ques­tions than it answers, but it would be churl­ish in the extreme not to accept the core point being made, that good qual­ity teach­ing should be cen­tral to a good edu­ca­tional pro­vi­sion, and most espe­cially for the edu­ca­tion of young children.

It is a dis­mal and unas­sail­able fact that there is a mas­sive short­age of good qual­ity teach­ers across the devel­op­ing world, espe­cially, but by no means exclu­sively, across the coun­tries in sub-Saharan Africa. Accord­ing to Gor­don Brown’s report, the world’s poor­est coun­tries need some­thing like 1.8 mil­lion addi­tional teach­ers over the next three years alone to pro­vide even basic pri­mary edu­ca­tion to their chil­dren, as well as around 4 mil­lion more class­rooms and all of the most basic items of equip­ment that we might expect to find in those classrooms.

Brown is absolutely right there­fore to state that:

The world is today fac­ing an edu­ca­tion emer­gency. That emer­gency does not make media head­lines. But it has dis­as­trous human, social and eco­nomic con­se­quences. It is con­sign­ing mil­lions of chil­dren to lives of poverty and dimin­ished oppor­tu­nity, hold­ing back progress in health, rein­forc­ing dis­par­i­ties linked to wealth and gen­der, and under­min­ing prospects for eco­nomic growth. And it is destroy­ing on an epic scale the most valu­able asset of the world’s poor­est nations – the cre­ativ­ity, tal­ent and poten­tial of the young generation.

An edu­ca­tion emer­gency indeed, and one on a vast and mas­sively con­se­quen­tial scale for human­ity world­wide. It requires equally vast and pro­longed global invest­ment to put right.

Else­where in the report, Gor­don Brown enthuses over the poten­tial for har­ness­ing tech­nol­ogy to improve edu­ca­tional pro­vi­sion. How­ever, he believes that:

New tech­nolo­gies do not offer a quick fix for sys­temic prob­lems in edu­ca­tion sys­tems. What they do offer is a vehi­cle for improv­ing access to oppor­tu­ni­ties for edu­ca­tion and the qual­ity of ser­vice provision.

The last thing this global emer­gency needs is any kind of quick fix. But I do believe that there is a poten­tially pow­er­ful appli­ca­tion of dig­i­tal and net­work­ing tech­nolo­gies that could play a sig­nif­i­cant role, along­side all the other big invest­ments needed, in con­tribut­ing to a much bet­ter qual­ity edu­ca­tion for many mil­lions of the poor­est chil­dren in the poor­est coun­tries around the world.

From Mas­sive Open Online Course to Mas­sive Open Online Class­room (MOOCl)

Any­one with even the remotest inter­est in higher edu­ca­tion of late will be aware of the MOOC. The basic con­cept of the Mas­sive Open Online Course (a term devised by Dave Cormier) is a sim­ple one, but the impli­ca­tions of the MOOC for the future of higher edu­ca­tion in par­tic­u­lar are the stuff of a debate that is wash­ing around global edu­ca­tion at the present time.

I will trust that any­one read­ing this already knows what a MOOC is, although I will not nec­es­sar­ily trust that every­one knows that there are MOOCs and there are MOOCs. If your knowl­edge of the con­cept of the MOOC is restricted to those ‘deliv­ered’ by the likes of Cours­era or Udac­ity, then I would urge you to go back to grass roots and read some of what you might find, for instance, in MOOC.ca, set up by Stephen Downes to host news, infor­ma­tion and dis­cus­sion around the con­cept, in the writ­ings of George Siemens, Dave Cormier, already men­tioned, and oth­ers. Open, exper­i­men­tal and con­nec­tivist in nature, the MOOC is an explicit and con­scious attempt to use the incred­i­ble affor­dances offered by the Inter­net to change the nature of education.

The massive-ness, open­ness and online-ness of the MOOC are all givens, of course, and are all crit­i­cal to the effect that the devel­op­ment is hav­ing at the present time. But I, for one, am less sure that the course-ness of the con­cept has to be a given too. I would recog­nise that the fact that the MOOC is built around the course is prob­a­bly what is keep­ing the con­cept fairly firmly within the broad arms of higher edu­ca­tion, for the moment at least. As Mar­tin Weller has written:

…after a decade of OERs, it’s inter­est­ing that we’re com­ing back to edu­ca­tor con­structed courses…

Class­room instead of Course?

When I look at the sit­u­a­tion faced by those mil­lions of chil­dren world­wide, in a con­text of poten­tial mas­sive global con­nect­ed­ness, and yet in cir­cum­stances where so many of them have no access to good teach­ing, I can’t but help won­der how the MOOC might be taken, re-shaped, and made into some­thing that could begin to ame­lio­rate some of the worst effects of that gen­er­ally awful situation.

I recog­nise, of course, that such a sim­ply stated change is, in fact, any­thing but sim­ple. The course is a gen­er­ally uncom­pli­cated thing, usu­ally (although by no means nec­es­sar­ily) lin­ear, struc­tured, a com­pre­hen­si­ble process in which ideas or con­cepts or infor­ma­tion are intro­duced, dis­cussed, dis­sected, re-shaped, com­bined, under­stood; it can be a sin­gle unit of ‘instruc­tion’ or a whole pro­gramme of learn­ing, or some­thing in between; and it can be deliv­ered or pre­sented (taught) by a sin­gle teacher or in some senses by every­one on the course (as the orig­i­nal con­cep­tion of the MOOC seeks to achieve).

The class­room, even the vir­tual, con­cep­tual class­room, is a quite dif­fer­ent beast. It is a ‘place’, a plat­form; it is the site where courses can hap­pen, where teach­ers can offer lessons across all dis­ci­plines, where learn­ers can go to access learn­ing, debate, insight, exper­tise, author­ity; it is a meet­ing place in which edu­ca­tion can hap­pen; it is the locus for teach­ing and learn­ing activ­i­ties of all kinds.

I believe we have many, per­haps most, of the ele­ments already that would have to be brought together to cre­ate the MOOCl. Instinc­tively, how­ever, I feel that a MOOCl would not be nearly as sim­ple as a MOOC to start up and sus­tain. It would require an oper­a­tional core of a kind and scale that is prob­a­bly not true of the MOOC, although that oper­a­tional core, I would sug­gest, need not be a sin­gle orga­niz­ing unit: it could be an open, dis­trib­uted affair, sym­pa­thetic to the ori­gins of the MOOC. It should offer access to masses of great teach­ing and learn­ing resources — the Khan Acad­emy is an obvi­ous exam­ple of what could be utilised, but so too could the thou­sands of other high qual­ity, freely avail­able teach­ing and learn­ing resources that increas­ingly throng the web, and across so many of the world’s major, and not so major, languages.

So far, so what? All of these resources are avail­able today. But the MOOCl would have to incor­po­rate some kind of orga­niz­ing layer, a sim­ple inter­face that would allow any indi­vid­ual any­where in the world not only to access the resources as such, but also to access courses, com­mu­ni­ties, teach­ers (who can be, and prob­a­bly will be, other learn­ers), exper­tise and guid­ance. The MOOCl might also be a device for those teach­ers who already are on the ground, so to speak, in the poor­est coun­tries, to grab hold of and use as a means of enhanc­ing their own teach­ing exper­tise. The MOOCl would be the teacher’s global men­tor, guide, teach­ing assis­tant, just as much as it would be the learner’s teacher too.

Again, you might say, this sounds like a descrip­tion of the World Wide Web. But the MOOCl would have to be more than sim­ply ‘avail­able’: it would have to be set up in a way that would allow it reach out in a proac­tive way, to find its way into those places in the world where we know there are young chil­dren who cur­rently have few or no teach­ers to help them learn, where there are few or no teach­ing and learn­ing resources. This will require much thought, huge orga­ni­za­tion, and of course invest­ment. Is there a role here for the big phil­an­thropic foun­da­tions as well as gov­ern­ments? I believe so.

But what of access to the net­work, access to con­nected devices? Of course, the MOOCl would have to be capa­ble of being used across the world’s mobile net­works and acces­si­ble on mobile devices — Gor­don Brown’s report tells us that mobile cel­lu­lar pen­e­tra­tion has reached 50% in the devel­op­ing world and is still increas­ing fast. The cell phone is the default access device for many mil­lions of peo­ple in the world’s poor­est coun­tries, and that is likely to be the case for many years to come.

How much of this can be done in the same spirit as the orig­i­nal MOOC? I don’t know, I sus­pect not much, but I would love to be proved wrong. I know I am merely scratch­ing the sur­face with an unde­vel­oped and poten­tially still­born idea — but if the acute minds of thought­ful and cre­ative peo­ple can come up with the MOOC, I would like to think those same, and other, minds could be applied to how we can turn the Mas­sive Open Online Course into the Mas­sive Open Online Class­room to serve the des­per­ate des­per­ate needs of so many mil­lions of chil­dren in dire eco­nomic and edu­ca­tional poverty across the world.

Hajera Blagg points up a log­i­cal link between the gath­er­ing momen­tum behind the MOOC and the notion of rad­i­cal social entre­pre­neur­ship. In a post enti­tled: ‘A class­room of thou­sands’: Dis­rupt­ing entre­pre­neur­ial edu­ca­tion with Mas­sive Open Online Courses she writes:

If MOOCs become a more com­mon way of learn­ing, then MOOC stu­dents who have under­stood the learn­ing process to be dynamic and col­lab­o­ra­tive will bring this mind­set to their own projects. Learn­ing com­mu­ni­ties (and sub-communities) emerge nat­u­rally from the MOOC process. These endeav­ors are likely to be more inclu­sive and socially-oriented, with the goal being advance­ment in the name of the com­mon good.

By treat­ing edu­ca­tion as a mas­sively open, col­lab­o­ra­tive process, MOOCs have the poten­tial to spread a dis­rup­tive entre­pre­neur­ial phi­los­o­phy through their class­rooms of thousands.

There are MOOCs and MOOCs (see, for instance, Tony Bates on Coursera-type MOOCs, or Stephen Downes’ dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion between what he terms xMOOCs and cMOOCs) but Hajera clearly under­stands that it is the learn­ers them­selves who will deter­mine what they are able to take away from their par­tic­i­pa­tion in a MOOC.

There’s a risk of a cir­cu­lar argu­ment here: those who go into a MOOC with an open and col­lab­o­ra­tive approach will be more likely to appre­ci­ate the ‘dis­rup­tive entre­pre­neur­ial phi­los­o­phy’ that can come out of the expe­ri­ence. But I would hope that some peo­ple who go into MOOCs car­ry­ing tra­di­tional bag­gage, expect­ing a top-down model, or look­ing for tra­di­tional cre­den­tial­ing, for exam­ple, might come to realise that their bag­gage is redun­dant, at which point they could well begin to under­stand the full power of the MOOC.

There’s an info­graphic on the MOOC appended to the post too.