Making Sense of MOOCs: Musings in a Maze of Myth, Paradox and Possibility

By John Daniel. 2012

1,238 citations recorded by the source corpus.

MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are the educational buzzword of 2012. Media frenzy surrounds them and commercial interests have moved in. Sober analysis is overwhelmed by apocalyptic predictions that ignore the history of earlier educational technology fads. The paper describes the short history of MOOCs and sets them in the wider context of the evolution of educational technology and open/distance learning. While the hype about MOOCs presaging a revolution in higher education has focussed on their scale, the real revolution is that universities with scarcity at the heart of their business models are embracing openness. We explore the paradoxes that permeate the MOOCs movement and explode some myths enlisted in its support. The competition inherent in the gadarene rush to offer MOOCs will create a sea change by obliging participating institutions to revisit their missions and focus on teaching quality and students as never before. It could also create a welcome deflationary trend in the costs of higher education.

Subfields: Computer Science Applications, Education, Information Systems

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/28206f547a1f94c74c6f5a3e5fbde0ba954a7672

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Citations in the corpus

MOOCs: A systematic study of the published literature 2008-2012 (2013, neutral): “Daniel (2012) on the other hand discusses cMOOCs and xMOOCs, which he claims are a bifurcation of MOOCs.”
Instructional quality of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) (2015, background): “It has been suggested that MOOCs could provide public indices of quality that may expose weaknesses in teaching and learning in elite institutions (Daniel, 2012).”
Dropout rates of massive open online courses : behavioural patterns (2014, background): “Keywords: MOOC, massive open online course, dropout rate, reasons for dropout, participants’ engagement, motivation, behavioural patterns, Moodle.”
The Power of Digital Storytelling to Support Teaching and Learning (2016, background): “The MOOC provides a solid foundation in the basic components of digital storytelling with tutorials, example digital stories and links to additional readings.”
Will MOOCs transform learning and teaching in higher education? Engagement and course retention in online learning provision (2015, background): “The literature has also been clear about pointing to the high “dropout” rates associated with MOOCs, with around 7–10% completing the courses (eg, Daniel, 2012).”
MOOCs and the funnel of participation (2013, background): “Some argue that it is a positive sign of an exploratory phase [46]; Daniel [18] points out that answers to this question create a sharp distinction between the xMOOCs providers and other distance learning institutions , with the xMOOCs observing that early drop-outs do not add significantly to co”
Changing “Course” (2014, background): “We focus on these particular MOOCs, which are instructor-guided and designed to scale up to support large numbers of learners (Daniel, 2012).”
Does online learning work better than offline learning in undergraduate medical education? A systematic review and meta-analysis (2019, background): “The use of online learning has vastly increased since 2012, as evidenced by the thriving of massive open online courses (MOOCs) [3].”
MOOCs as disruptive technologies: strategies for enhancing the learner experience and quality of MOOCs Los MOOC como tecnologías disruptivas: estrategias para mejorar la experiencia de aprendizaje y la calidad de los MOOC. (2016, background): “However, he goes on to state that they are criticised for the lack of constructive feedback and the lack of creative and original thinking, citing Bates (2012) and low completion rates, citing Daniel (2012).”
Understanding Student Motivation, Behaviors and Perceptions in MOOCs (2015, methodology): “, an emphasis on connected, collaborative learning)[8, 31, 32]; and contentbased extended MOOCs (xMOOCs), which emphasize a more traditional learning approach by video presentations that are complemented by short quizzes and other testing[8, 31, 32, 39].”
The role of students' motivation and participation in predicting performance in a MOOC (2016, methodology): “Originating with George Siemens and Stephen Downes’ Connectivism and Connective Knowledge course in 2008 (Daniel, 2012; Liyanagunawardena, Adams, & Williams, 2013; Yuan & Powell, 2013) MOOCs were originally designed on principles of connectivism (Siemens, 2005).”
The impact and reach of MOOCs: a developing countries’ perspective (2013, neutral): “Education researchers have classified the pedagogical underpinnings of MOOCs into cMOOCs (connectivist MOOCs) and xMOOCs (a more institution oriented MOOC model) (Daniel, 2012; Rodriguez, 2013) or cMOOCs and AI Stanford like courses (Rodriguez, 2012).”
Initial trends in enrolment and completion of massive open online courses (2014, background): “Vol 15 | No 1 Feb/14 134 Introduction In the past two years, massive open online courses (MOOCs) have entered the mainstream via the establishment of several high-profile MOOC platforms (primarily Coursera, EdX, and Udacity), offering free courses from a range of elite universities and receiving a g”
Promoting engagement in online courses: What strategies can we learn from three highly rated MOOCS (2016, background): “To date, MOOCs may be classified into two broad groups of courses, which are known as xMOOCs and cMOOCs (Conole, 2013; Daniel, 2012).”