The Course as Container: Distributed Learning and the MOOC

Abstract

Critics of MOOCs and connected learning environments in general assert that they are too susceptible to neoliberal motivations, that MOOCs propose to replace 1000 local instructors with one famous one, and that the “disruption” that MOOCs promise will ultimately be the disruption of traditional academic culture altogether. Certainly, this anxiety is worth exploring, for, as we know, no technological platform, no code, is ideologically neutral. However, to eschew the methodologies of online communities—which, in terms of new media practices, certainly pre-date the first MOOCs—because they run the risk of being co-opted is reactionary.

We don’t want to be teaching in the worst possible way to the most possible people. We want to be learning the best ways to teach by doing careful, open-ended and open-minded research on exactly how massive numbers of people are learning online.~ Cathy N. Davidson, “What Can MOOCs Teach Us About Learning?”