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Higher Education Quarterly, 0951-5224 DOI: 10.1111/hequ.12061 Volume 69, No. 2, April 2015, pp 175–192
Massive Open Online Change? Exploring the Discursive Construction of the ‘MOOC’ in Newspapers Neil Selwyn, Monash University,
[email protected] Scott Bulfin, Monash University,
[email protected] and Luci Pangrazio, Monash University,
[email protected]
Abstract Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been a prominent topic of recent educational discussion and debate. MOOCs are, in essence, universityaffiliated courses offered to large groups of online learners for little or no cost and are seen by many as a bellwether for change and reform across higher education systems. This study uses content and discourse analysis methods to examine how understandings of MOOC-related ‘change’ were presented in US, UK and Australian newspapers. Drawing on detailed analysis of 457 newspaper articles published between 2011 and 2013, the findings point to a predominant portrayal of MOOCs in relation to the massification, marketization and monetization of higher education, rather than engaging in debate of either ‘technological’ or ‘educational’ issues such as online learning and pedagogy, instructional design or student experience. The article then considers the reasons underpinning this restricted framing of what many commentators have touted as a radical educational form—not least the apparently close association between MOOCs and the economics of higher education.
Introduction One prominent topic of recent discussion about higher education has been the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). In essence MOOCs are university-affiliated courses offered to masses of online learners for little or no cost. Through the rise of providers such as Udacity, edX, Coursera and Futurelearn, MOOCs have featured in recent popular © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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discourse at levels not seen with previous educational innovations, prompting a tangible shift in the volume and urgency of debate about higher education in the digital age. In one sense, the frenzy over MOOCs could be said to have replicated a familiar pattern of educational (over)reaction to technological innovation: what Gouseti (2010, p. 351) has termed a cycle of ‘hype, hope and disappointment’. This sees initial periods of intense hyperbole over the educational possibilities of any ‘new’ technology, leading to a variety of more specific expectations over the likely outcomes of provision, followed by gradual disappointment as the compromised realities of the technology become apparent. Yet, in another sense, MOOCs differ from most previous advancements in the field of educational technology in that they have featured prominently in the mainstream consciousness as well as within specialist circles. The past few years have seen MOOCs become a matter of sustained concern across universities—from policymakers and sector associations through to vice-chancellors, teaching unions, higher education practitioners and the general public. Thus, one of the most notable ‘disruptive’ impacts of MOOCs during this time has been the increased public discussion of online education and e-learning beyond the insular ‘bubble’ of specialist educational technology circles. For some people working in higher education, MOOCs are already seen as passé. There has been considerable criticism of low rates of enrolment, retention and completion, alongside the apparent corporate nature of much MOOC provision (Baggaley, 2013; Naidu, 2013; Zutshi et al., 2013). As such, attention is turning towards even ‘newer’ technology-related innovations, such as learning analytics and ‘big data’. Thus while the objects and practices associated with MOOCs (the actual courses, the providers and so on) may well fade quickly into obscurity, the lasting impact of the ‘MOOC moment’ of the early 2010s may well turn out to be discursive; that is, marking a significant shift in the ways in which online education is approached and understood as an increasingly important element of mainstream higher education. Indeed, when the levels of publicity surrounding MOOCs is compared to the actual numbers of courses and students, then MOOCs are perhaps best understood as ‘imaginary’ (Fairclough, 1995): as a prefiguring of possible and desired realities rather than a unified and coherent domain around which clear boundaries exist. The primary significance of MOOCs, therefore, is what they tell us about the wider prevalent hopes, fears, desires and expectations surrounding higher education in the 2010s; particularly in the face of © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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the fast-changing technological, economic, political and demographic characteristics of recent times. This paper addresses the discursive construction of MOOCs during their rise to prominence from the beginning of 2011 through to the end of 2013. In particular, it focuses on the ways in which MOOCs were portrayed, positioned and discussed within mainstream English language newspapers during this time. Of course, much debate over the rights and wrongs of MOOCs has taken place online (through blogs and social media platforms) but this has been confined inevitably to niche communities of largely like-minded education technology practitioners and advocates. Thus, while the current commentary and debate about MOOCs clearly is taking place on a multi-platform basis, ‘old media’ news sources continue to be sites where the majority of the general public (and a good proportion of education professionals) have been most likely to encounter the idea of ‘MOOCs’. As such, these ‘old’ news media should be seen as having a significant bearing on the ongoing development of online education as a mainstream educational form. Against this background, the current paper focuses on the following research questions: • What meanings and understandings of higher education have been conveyed through mainstream newspaper portrayals of MOOCs and in whose interests do these work? • To what extent are these constructions of MOOCs situated within (or speak against) dominant structures of production and power? • How do these discourses frame some of the wider concerns around higher education (for example, access to education, the relationship between the individual and the commons, nature of knowledge, the public and the private)? Research approach and methods As these research questions suggest, the theoretical approach of this paper is situated within the tradition of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and is therefore concerned with the ways in which newspaper discourses around MOOCs reproduce or disrupt social and power relations within higher education. The basic premise of CDA is that language use is not neutral but infused with issues of power, privilege, ideology and politics. Language use is therefore seen as a form of social practice that is entwined with social struggle and, it follows, is contested and contestable (Fairclough, 1989; van Dijk, 1993). On one hand, then, © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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what is said about ‘new’ digital developments in education is clearly shaped by existing relations of power, ideological agendas and forms or conditions of dominance. However, what is said about developments such as MOOCs also acts to shape on-going educational conditions relating to the knowledge, social relations and social identities that surround them. In this sense, discourse should be understood as a key element in the production of the social reality of contemporary higher education: how people understand ‘the way things are’ and (perhaps most importantly) ‘the way things could be’ when it comes to the use of digital technology in education. Indeed, as Thomas (1999, p. 42) reasoned, ‘each discourse embodies constraints on the meanings it makes possible’. Critical discourse analysis can, therefore, be used to ask questions of how certain meanings and understandings of digital education come to dominate over others and how particular groups wield discursive power over others. There is much, then, that a CDA approach can bring to the analysis of MOOCs, particularly with regards to unpacking the meaning making implicit in recent discussion of the implications of new technologies for changing the future arrangement of higher education. The CDA approach suggests, for example, making a distinction between different dimensions of the MOOC discourse (Fairclough, 1989). These include the contents of the discourse, that is, what is said (and not said) about MOOCs and education; the implicit social relations that the discourse assumes and helps establish between participants; and the subject positions that the discourse sets up, that is, the implicit power relations, social distance, authority claims and construction of oppositional groups. The CDA approach, therefore, draws attention to the question of how particular representations of the content, relations and subjects come to dominate popular understandings of digital education and, in particular, come to be ‘naturalised’ as a generally unchallenged form of ‘common sense’ (Fairclough, 1989). This is when the ideological character of a discourse is obscured; when ‘received wisdom’ works to obscure the vested interests, dominant agendas and power imbalances of any situation, especially the social relations and power hierarchies that exist between different actors and interests. In this sense (and the particular focus of this paper), the CDA approach highlights the need to complement concerns over the contested notion of ‘the MOOC’ as technological form with concerns over online education as social form. This points to the need to consider the social actors (individuals, institutions, vested interests) and social relations that are implicated in these changes. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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The CDA approach is, therefore, well-suited to testing the ideas, values and ideologies that have surrounded the recent rise of MOOCs, especially the potential democratising of educational opportunity, challenging of institutional monopolies and the benefits of a diversity of educational provision. As Taylor (2004) argued, the CDA approach is of particular value in documenting multiple and competing discourses, as well as highlighting marginalised and hybrid discourses. Given the fastchanging and complex nature of the development of MOOCs over the past few years (for example, from the ‘connectivist’ origins of the so-called ‘cMOOC’ to the institutionally-focused model of the so-called ‘xMOOC’), a CDA perspective can provide a much-needed sociopolitical analysis to the prevailing claims and counter-claims in this area of educational activity. Following the CDA tradition, a large-scale corpus of text was collated encompassing all news media stories published between 1st January 2011 and 31st December 2013 in the nine sources of English language discourse production (Table 1). The six ‘popular’ news-media sources were selected to include the ‘newspapers of record’ from the US (New York Times), UK (The Times) and Australia (The Australian), alongside corresponding nationwide titles in each country that have focused on educational and technology issues (Washington Post, Guardian, The Age). Similarly the three specialist ‘educational’ news-media titles were selected due to their long-standing reputation as authoritative sources on education (Higher Education Chronicle, Times Higher Education, Education Week). Interrogations of these sources through the Dow Jones ProQuest databases with the search terms ‘MOOC or Udacity or edX or Coursera’ returned 457 articles. Of these, 354 were descriptive articles ‘relat[ing] the ‘basic facts’ surrounding an event or situation’ (Johnson and Avery, 1999, p. 453). Conversely, 103 were opinion articles that were intended to share a perspective, for example, editorials, op-ed pieces, commentaries, news analyses and letters to the editor. The data analysis reported upon in this paper was concerned with what particular interpretations of ‘MOOCs’ were being produced, as well as why particular interpretations were being produced, thereby focusing on the role of discourse in the construction, consolidation and reproduction of the ‘reality’ of MOOCs (Fairclough, 1995). The analysis, therefore, combined frame analysis and discourse analysis to concentrate on how various linguistic and rhetorical features (such as lexical strategies, propositions and presuppositions, metaphors, attribution, interpersonal functions and agency) were mobilised to © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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Popular news- New York Times media (US) Washington Post (US) The Times (UK)
Number Reference numbers assigned to of articles each article within overall corpus 93 75 18
Guardian (UK)
25
The Australian
58
The Age 10 (Australia) Educational Higher Education 93 news–media Chronicle Times Higher 75 Education
Education Week
10
224–305, 407, 410, 412, 417, 442–443, 445–447, 449, 456 155–223, 432–433, 435, 453–454, 457 11, 13, 20, 23, 29, 43, 49, 52, 59, 67–69, 81, 94, 101, 406, 409, 429 6–7, 10, 16, 24, 32, 40, 51, 53, 56, 66, 70, 76, 84, 86, 89, 90, 93, 99, 405, 415, 428, 441, 444, 455 104–129, 131–135, 137–139, 141–142, 144–153, 408, 413, 424–427, 431, 438–439, 448, 450–451 113–114, 130, 136, 140, 143, 148–150, 153 315–404, 419, 436, 440 1–5, 8–9, 12, 14–15, 17–19, 21–22, 25–28, 30–31, 33–39, 41–42, 44–48, 50, 55, 57–58, 60–65, 71–75, 77–80, 82–83, 85, 87–88, 91–92, 95–98, 100, 102–103, 411, 414, 416, 418, 420, 422–423, 430, 434, 437 306–314, 421
implement the argumentative and discursive strategies at play within the MOOC debates. As the following sections will illustrate, this combination of frame analysis and discourse analysis, therefore, contrasts the MOOC discourses ‘on the surface’ (macro-level frames and tones) with the MOOC discourses ‘beneath the surface’ (micro-level discursive features). Results The corpus analysis identified fifteen distinct discursive themes (Table 2). © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Higher education marketplace General sense of transformation Business and economic aspects Pedagogy Free Content
Students Teachers Élite universities
Global /national
Assessment Technology
Learning Other universities
2.
5. 6. 7.
8. 9. 10.
11.
12. 13.
14. 15.
4.
3.
Size and scale
1.
Theme
TABLE 2
Modes of teaching; instructional design. Low cost/no cost of MOOCs for students. Subject content and knowledge; subject areas being taught. Individuals taking MOOCs as students. MOOC teachers and other university staff. Institutions identified in terms of their high-status and reputation. MOOCs as associated with a particular country, or described as a worldwide phenomenon. Assessment of student work; online grading; feedback. Specific reference to digital technology and digital media. Forms of learning taking place through MOOCs. Universities not identified in terms of their high status (distinct from theme#10)
Number of students, courses and countries; scale of investment. Competition between universities for students; credentialisation of degree. Non-specific/generalised descriptions of change and disruption. Emerging business models; methods of monetisation and profitmaking.
Description
69 22
115 98
134
156 151 145
188 163 159
202
227
283
284
Number of articles citing this theme
92 26
222 154
232
272 287 248
358 236 270
495
628
898
710
Number of separate references to this theme
Thematic analysis of the newspaper article corpus (fifteen themes)
55 17
156 110
165
133 144 172
204 161 178
267
395
524
450
Number of separate references in popular newspapers
37 9
66 44
67
139 143 76
154 75 92
228
233
374
260
Number of separate references in specialist education newspapers
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This paper considers these themes against the broad notion of change. Alongside the association between MOOCs and a general transformation of higher education (theme 3), change was described in more specific terms: the increased size and scale of university courses (theme 1); the altered market dynamics of higher education (themes 2, 10, 15); the potential monetisation of higher education (themes 4, 6); and matters of teaching and learning (themes 5, 7, 8, 9, 12, 14). These issues are now discussed in more detail in the following sections. MOOCs as a general source of ‘change’ The association between MOOCs and change was evoked in a variety of ways throughout the news articles. On one hand were suggestions of readjustment and rearrangement, such as the repeated notion of MOOCs representing a ‘shake-up’ [86, 315, 39], ‘shaking up’ [151] and a ‘shake-out’ [383] of higher education. On the other hand were more forceful suggestions of fundamental reform. Here MOOCs were described as a ‘revolution’ [122, 290] that would ‘transform’ [315, 325, 187] higher education. Echoing the rhetoric of digital change in other areas of society, some articles pitched the MOOC as ‘disruptive’ [111, 105] and a ‘game-changer’ [115, 4, 149]. A few of these extreme descriptions, as ‘new era’ [332] and ‘paradigm shift’ [115], were tempered by acknowledgement of the exaggerated nature of the ensuing ‘MOOC mania’ [322]. As one otherwise enthusiastic article noted, ‘MOOCs have quickly traversed the cultural cycle of hype, saturation, backlash, and backlash-to-the-backlash’ [324]. Of particular note were the varied metaphorical suggestions used to position MOOCs as an agent of change. Some articles employed vehicular descriptions of a fast moving ‘juggernaut’ [229, 120], ‘bandwagon’ [343] and ‘online train’ [333]. As the Chronicle of Higher Education put it, MOOCs were ‘a rocket ship, with folks desperate not to be left behind’ [330]. Alternatively, other articles equated MOOCs with the dismantling of the university as a physical form. Here stories described ‘the beginning of the end for the ivory tower’ [351], ‘knocking at the foundations’ [133], ‘break[ing] the mould [110] and most literally, ‘pull[ing] the keystone out of the arch and all hell br[ea]k[ing] loose’ [120]. More common still were metaphors relating to nature and the natural world. This included ideas of MOOCs as part of a ‘savage Darwinian evolution’ [4] and heralding an ‘inevitable trajectory to extinction’ for ‘the traditional university’ [144]. MOOCs were also presented as momentous forces of nature—a ‘tectonic shift’ [12], ‘whirlwind’ [322], ‘avalanche’ [6, 229], ‘fire’ [160], ‘tidal wave’ [72] and © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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‘tsunami’ [290, 341, 400, 330, 382]. In all these different guises, the suggestion was of MOOCs as a force of irresistible change. As the Times Higher Educatrion put it, ‘traditional universities need to get into (MOOCs), rather than be like King Canute trying to hold back the waves’ [85]. MOOCs and the massification of higher education While evocative, the descriptions just outlined say little about the specific form of any change. Further into many of the articles, however, were more tangible accounts of change; most notably the ‘massive’ nature of MOOCs. These sometimes referred to the organisational scale of MOOC provision, for example, numbers of participating institutions, numbers of countries covered and levels of financial investment. News stories would marvel at a MOOC provider being a ‘$60 million venture’ [271], offering ‘several hundred courses’ [405] and working with ‘at least 85 universities’ [119]. Most common, however, were accounts of the ‘mind-boggling numbers of students who have signed up to MOOCs’ [4]. Beyond broad suggestions of a ‘mass audience’ [308, 142] the magnitude of these descriptions varied, with reports ranging from classes of ‘40,000 students ... arriv[ing] here via the internet to take a free course’ [361] to ‘100,000 strangers—or more—log[ging] on to free classes’ [378]. At most, suggestions were made of participation rates in the ‘millions’ [102, 136], ‘hundreds of millions’ [142, 243] and even a ‘billion’ [27, 16]. These estimates were buoyed by a limitless sense of ‘universal access’ [324] to education for ‘anybody with Internet access’ [315]. All told, participation rates were felt to be far outstripping traditional forms of higher education—‘a volume play that we haven’t seen in this space’ [4]. These expectations were sustained through several recurring narratives, not least the recurring ‘origin story’ of Sebastian Thrun’s Artificial Intelligence course in Stanford. This recounted a relatively obscure but technology-savvy lecturer ‘announc[ing] the project with a single e-mail; 160,000 people signed up from 190 countries’ [81]. The story of this initial success, and Professor Thrun’s subsequent founding of the forprofit Udacity MOOC platform, was retold with a sense of wonder, prompting the question ‘just how big can MOOCs grow? [140]. For some commentators, especially in later reports from the specialist education press, this up-scaling was not welcomed unconditionally. MOOC providers were accused of making ‘the classic mistake of valuing quantity over quality’ [343]. Mass forms of online education were also felt to be exacerbating inefficiencies. As one article put it, ‘making © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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courseware ‘massive’ ... does not ‘fix’ what is broken in our system of education. It massively scales what’s broken’ [334]. In particular, questions were raised over ‘huge dropout rates and abysmally low pass rates’ [188], with Thrun himself later ‘describ[ing] his own platform as a ‘lousy product’ because too few students were finishing modules’ [406]. Some commentators questioned the quality of the mass learning experience, asking ‘how do you make the massive feel intimate?’ [224]. This implied sense of disapproval even extended into allusions of inappropriateness and vulgarity, with one MOOC provider described as having ‘racked up gaudy numbers’ [157]. In the majority of articles, however, such concerns were eclipsed by ‘MOOC-like economies of scale’ [316]. For example, it was suggested that high dropout rates and ‘low rate[s] of success is a sign of the system’s efficiency’ [51]. Similarly, MOOC providers argued that any level of educational engagement was to be celebrated: ‘people are welcome to sign on in whatever spirit of participation they can’ [329]. Other reports highlighted the ‘unexpected intimacy’ [160] and ‘liberating’ [348] nature of the student cohorts. Taking part in a MOOC was described as evoking ‘the feeling of being part of a huge movement— like a club, attending a concert or a demo—a sense of belonging’ [31]. Underlying many of these celebrations of scale was the belief that MOOCs were resulting in a ‘democratizing of higher education’ [109]. As the Times Higher Education reported, ‘education is a basic human right that everyone should have access to’ [3]. MOOCs and the marketization of higher education Of course, MOOCs were not presented in wholly altruistic terms. Indeed, regular reference was also made to the relationships between MOOCs and higher education ‘markets’. This included the competition between universities to enrol students and also the internal markets as students compete for qualifications. In this former sense, MOOCs were presented often as enhancing the ability of individual universities to ‘sell’ themselves to new consumers. MOOCs were heralded as a ‘great marketing ploy’ leading to potentially ‘serious numbers’ [47] of feepaying enrolments. MOOCs were seen to enhance the market profile of participating universities, enhancing ‘the value of the brand—and the premium for ... campus education’ [109]. The notion of MOOCs as a marketing tool was prominent throughout these portrayals, with descriptions of ‘an advertisement for our institute’ [256] and ‘virtual shop windows to drive paying students through their doors’ [406]. These online courses were seen to offer potential students a ‘taster’ [4] of a © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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university, with the prospect of subsequent ‘commitment and loyalty by potential students to bigger, paid-for education’ [142]. Of course, it was acknowledged that these benefits would more likely accrue to some universities at the expense of others. Predictions were made that ‘students would desert weak universities’ [34] leaving ‘wishy-washy local courses’ in a ‘struggle to survive’ [152]. Beyond matters of enrolment, attention also focused on the relationship between MOOCs and the ‘current credentialing infrastructure’ [315] of university education. As the Chronicle of Higher Education put it, the prospect of MOOCs being accepted as ‘creditworthy’ [315] ‘might help to bring educational costs down to earth’ [25]. Articles reported with relish ‘stalled efforts to push MOOCs through the institutional membrane that surrounds higher-education credentialing’ [316]. They also presented successful attempts to use MOOCs as credit with some suspicion. One US college was described as using MOOCs to offer a full masters degree ‘at an unusually low cost’ [332]. Elsewhere students were reported as receiving ‘cut-price credit’ [110] and ‘super-cheap’ [180] qualifications. These connotations of market value and market positioning were also reflected in how individual universities were positioned within the news stories. The majority of universities mentioned were described as ‘prestigious’ [322, 331, 115] and ‘élite’ [321, 324, 327, 343, 346, 308, 115] thereby drawing attention to the ‘pedigree’ [316] of the universities involved in the major MOOC platforms. These were ‘the most famous universities in the world’ [324], ‘world-leading’ [109] and from the ‘top-tier’ [346]. Mention was often made of ‘Ivy League’ [376, 116] credentials. These were ‘academic heavyweights’ [350], ‘titans’ [109] and ‘centuries-old scions’ [117]. In comparison, MOOCs were seen to threaten the ‘non-élite’ [258], ‘mediocre middle’ [229] and ‘downmarket’ [324] institutions that had been slow to get involved in providing online courses. These were ‘lower-ranked’ [443] institutions, ‘lesser’ [230] and ‘smaller’ [375, 46, 229] in prestige and status as well as their actual size: ‘public universities already stuck in a spiral of inadequate budgets and underprepared students’ [346]. MOOCs and the monetisation of higher education A fourth prominent theme related to the economics of MOOC provision. Many news articles were quick to position MOOCs as being ‘free’ in monetary terms to any student. These were ‘complimentary courses’ [102] with ‘a $0 price tag’ [323]. As a product ‘free at the point of consumption’ [50], the monetary value of MOOCs was therefore © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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framed as an area of ‘uncertainty’ [333]. In economic terms, this was a site of ‘risks and rewards’ [121] where ‘many questions remain’ [322] with regards to ‘when and if money does come in’ [376]. Progression towards ‘a viable business model’ [121, 55] was seen by many as ‘urgent’ [131] if higher education was not to ‘risk missing a huge moneymaking opportunity’ [23]. As one Provost was quoted in the New York Times, ‘we don’t want to make the mistake the newspaper industry did, of giving our product away free online for too long’ [234]. A tension between MOOCs as continuing existing business models or heralding less traditional approaches ran throughout many articles. In this latter sense, some MOOC providers were presented as an example of ‘social entrepreneurship’, ‘a relatively new kind of business leader ... they are not your typical money-grubbing suits’ [363]. In particular MOOCs were often aligned with the ‘start-up’ business approach favoured by new technology firms. This was celebrated as ‘driven by a familiar Silicon Valley imperative—build fast and worry about money later’ [376]. Despite the ‘Wild West’ conditions, MOOC providers were proving successful in ‘attracting additional collaborators and investment money’ [316]. As one professor wrote in the New York Times, ‘the idea of a remote course that will ‘educate’ thousands or hundreds of thousands of students is something only a venture capitalist could dream up’ [454]. Elsewhere, however, MOOCs were framed in less innovative terms as primarily serving to bolster the fortunes of traditional university businesses. The ‘cheap’ [106] digitisation of content was described as ‘push[ing] down the cost of higher education’ [4]. MOOCs, therefore, offered a ‘new revenue stream [that] could be a lifeline for public institutions hit by declining state financial support’ [74]. As The Age reflected, MOOCs were ‘not designed to radically challenge existing higher education business models’ [114]. Indeed, MOOCs were seen to be bringing traditional ‘Wal-Mart’ [383] business practices to bear on higher education—i.e. ‘provid[ing] a cheap, mass-produced product to consumers’ [383]. The business model here was a simple one of ‘economies of scale ... one instructor, 50,000 students. This is the way to bend the cost curves’ [376]. In this sense MOOCs were seen as an extension (rather than disruption) of the ‘broader logics of commerce and reform’ [346]. MOOCs and changes in teaching and learning A final set of related themes was concerned with the educational (rather than economic) characteristics of MOOCs. Here, MOOCs were © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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discussed as representing either considerable change or no change at all to traditional processes of teaching and learning. With regards to pedagogy, for example, the combination of ‘self-paced learning’ [168], ‘short videos and embedded quizzes’ [231], ‘discussion boards and other digital interfaces’ [168] was presented in some articles as a radically different form of teaching. For a few commentators this was ‘education 2.0’ [124], ‘the next-generation textbook’ [198] and something that ‘will challenge ‘centuries-old pedagogical methods’ [12]. As the Chronicle of Higher Education concluded hopefully, ‘we have a potential for a learning mash-up of the loftiest, most creative, learner-centred kind’ [334]. Elsewhere, however, the pedagogic characteristics of MOOCs were described in less approving terms: ‘a pretty crude form’ [333] where a focus on ‘linear instructivism’ [5] left ‘little that is pedagogically adventurous’ [4]. What were referred to in some articles as ‘automatically graded exercises’ [102] were elsewhere represented more pejoratively as ‘robot-graded assignments’ [319]. As the Times Higher Education concluded, ‘even the most innovative MOOC platforms, however, typically remain conservative: they take an existing university model and stream it online’ [25]. Similarly, those students taking MOOCs tended to be portrayed in either exceptional or unexceptional terms. On one hand were articles highlighting isolated cases of individuals benefiting from MOOCs in extraordinary ways. One such repeated story involved a ‘student in Mongolia’ who passed a MOOC in electronics with ‘a perfect score’ and was then accepted for entry by an Ivy League institution [49, 233]. Less exotically, perhaps, MOOCs were praised for attracting a self-selecting group of ‘intellectually driven’ [343], ‘self-motivated’ [308] students who demanded ‘education that is mobile and accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week’ [130]. Some commentators celebrated the heterogeneity of MOOC students; the ‘whole gamut of older and younger, experienced and less experienced students’ [329], from ‘teenagers to retirees, and from across the globe’ [224]. However, these online participants were not always seen as equivalent to what were termed ‘traditional students’ [338]. More sceptical commentators referred to ‘dilettantes and dabblers’ [114], ‘sign[ing] up to ‘window shop’ or dip in and out’ [76], resulting unsatisfactorily in groups of ‘tens of thousands of ‘students’ (I use the word loosely)’ [179]. Teachers also tended to be framed in either exceptional or wholly unexceptional terms. MOOC teachers, on the one hand were exalted as ‘top professors in the field’ [356], ‘world-leading professors’ [109] and ‘top academic talent’ [110]. These were described as ‘dynamic and © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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attractive’ [119], ‘top-notch’ [281] and ‘big name’ [356, 260] teachers. One recurrent metaphor was the stellar nature of MOOC teaching, with articles evoking the ‘supernova effects’ [5] of online teaching, where teachers became positioned as the ‘star turn’ [105], ‘web star’ [34], ‘superstar’ [411] and ‘star professor’ [229, 430, 331]. Thus MOOC teachers were imagined as the ‘rock star’ [52, 180, 192, 118] ‘playing to a gigantic new audience’ [52]. Exposure to the large numbers of students was seen as having ‘high-profile’ [315] connotations; resulting in a cadre of ‘A-list celebrity professors’ [228] becoming ‘the Kim Kardashians of the academic world’ [439]. Non-starring university teachers, on the other hand, were described much less favourably. MOOCs were welcomed as an opportunity to ‘get rid of the duff scholars’ [422], prompting ‘freak-outs’ [25] amongst the ‘rest of the faculty’ [291] who were not involved. As one commentator in the New York Times concluded, ‘I pity the offline teachers’ [228]. MOOCs and the politics of contemporary higher education change The printed news media have certainly presented MOOCs in several contradictory ways, albeit reconciled by an overarching sense of technology-driven ‘change’. While it is agreed that MOOCs involve exceptionally large numbers of students, these students are either thrilled by the crowded stadium-like experience or disconnected from the intimacies of learning. Despite talk of circumventing traditional higher education systems, the legitimacy of the MOOC as an educational form appears to derive primarily from their association with high status, élite universities. Courses are driven by renowned professors enjoying the cachet of celebrity and status, while the mass of non-élite educators and institutions worry about their futures. Teaching and learning is heralded as innovative and ‘2.0’ but also derided as replicating the passive instructionism of twentieth century higher education. Above all, MOOCs are presented primarily as economic rather than educational forms: driven by venture capitalism, turning university staff into entrepreneurs and spawning large-scale providers that threaten to dwarf national higher education systems. MOOCs, therefore, present a new an uncertain phase of the fee-paying structure of university tuition, while also bolstering the stock of established university ‘brands’ and their revenue streams. Some differences in specific emphasis were apparent between popular and specialist education news sources. Popular newspapers, for instance, were more likely to emphasise the involvement of ‘élite’ universities, the © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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lack of financial charge and the nature of the content being taught. Specialist education newspapers more likely to focus on teachers, students, pedagogy and the economic connotations of these online courses. Nevertheless, the main discourses of change, massification, marketization and monetisation were in evidence across the different titles, suggesting a stability of these discourses across different contexts. In this sense, MOOCs can be said to be a discursive form par excellence. As a novel term with no established connotations, the idea of ‘the MOOC’ is clearly broad and mutable enough to be able to accommodate multiple meanings of radical change and conservative continuity. From what has been said in these articles, a lay-reader (lacking prior specialist interest in online learning or educational technology) would, therefore, come to view MOOCs as a new educational form that is nevertheless relatively safe and controllable—more likely to reinforce the status quo of traditional higher education than overturn it. Moreover, these articles are just as significant with respect to what they do not say, that is, the silences and omissions in the stories that they recount. Significantly, the reader’s attention is deflected away from the low levels of public awareness and student enrolment in MOOCs, as well as the complexities of the student experience for those who actually do participate. Perhaps the most obvious silence is these stories’ (non)presentation of digital technology itself, with ‘the internet’, web portals, video streaming and computer-mediated-communication all presented in neutral or non-existent terms. Indeed, the depiction of change through metaphors of natural disasters, evolution and moving vehicles belies a classic technological determinist approach where new technology is justified as having an inevitable, autonomous and natural effect on society, thereby avoiding any critical scrutiny or controversy. These instances of discursive omission are often subtle and easily overlooked amidst the hyperbole of the overall MOOC ‘headline’. For example, the prominence within many news articles of the straightforward understanding of MOOCs being ‘free’ of charge obscures the more countercultural aspects of ‘openness’ that MOOCs originated from, where notions of free gratis were secondary to the notion of free libre. Similar reframing is evident in the limited ways in which MOOCs are described as means of ‘democratization’. Here democracy was used in the market-led sense of a meritocracy and equality of opportunity, rather than more radical notion of equality of outcome and social justice. Also obscured were the ‘grass roots’ origins of MOOCs: especially the work of Canadian ‘Open Educators’ during the 2000s in developing the first MOOCs and how these original efforts imply a range © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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of alternative forms that the MOOC concept might take given different circumstances. Indeed, very little remains of earlier conceptions of MOOCs as learner-driven, diffuse, fragmented, de-institutionalised and non-commercialised focused forms of participatory online learning (McAuley et al., 2010). All in all, then, the discursive construction of the MOOC in popular news media should be seen as providing a rich case study of ‘how language works to construct meanings that signify people, objects and events in the world in specific ways’ (Brookes, 1995, p. 462). In this sense, the meaning making within these articles is rooted firmly in the language of ‘academic capitalism’ (Slaughter, 2004) and, in particular, the ongoing marketization of higher education in increasingly globalised and ‘informationalized’ times (Kauppinen, 2013). The discourses evident throughout these news articles should be seen primarily as discursive strategies that legitimate existing forms of control across global higher education, naturalise existing hierarchies and reinforce long-standing status differences between universities. Despite the radical possibilities of the MOOC, the underlying sense is one of an intensification of higher education along market-driven lines. MOOCs are therefore being positioned within newspaper discourse as a continuation of the established production, selling and consumption of higher education. These articles therefore act to legitimate market values, practices and orderings; fixing particular meanings around MOOCs that bound what is done and what is perceived as being possible with new forms of online higher education along market-led lines. As such, these articles represent a ‘taming’ of MOOCs by the established economic order and vested business interests of higher education. This is perhaps illustrated best in the broad rhetorical and argumentative structure of many of the articles, which tended to be one of MOOCs leading inevitably to significant changes that somehow would not disrupt the basic market arrangements and orderings of higher education. For example, it was generally accepted that distinct hierarchies would persist between élite and non-élite higher education institutions and that established differences in quality would translate over seamlessly into the new online context of the MOOC. Indeed, the highly atomised and automated nature of MOOCs as an educational experience was glossed over through ‘the borrowed familiarity of a real world university’ (Portmess, 2013, n.p.), especially in the linguistic appropriation of ‘seminar’, ‘tutorial’, ‘lecture’ and so on. Conversely, however, the fact that most MOOCs were being coordinated by new corporate providers such as Udacity and Coursera (rather than © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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individual educators or universities) was generally not challenged or problematised. Indeed, the implications of the increased role of commercial interests tended to be side-lined, despite their role in the commodification and selling of these ‘university’ courses along quantifiably intensified market-led lines. Throughout all these observations, then, the sense emerges that MOOCs have been used as a ready means through which to reiterate and reassert the global higher education order. Indeed, MOOCs could be seen as the latest in a succession of ways of rationalising the continuities of higher education in what could be seen as time of considerable economic, technological and demographic change. As such, the nature of MOOC discourse is understandably nebulous, vague, ambiguous and contradictory: reflecting what Portmess (2013, n.p.) has termed ‘the open, shifting and indeterminate ontology of MOOCs’. That said, by using CDA this paper has certainly been able to pin the meaning of MOOCs down in more specific terms; not least the discursive role of ‘the MOOC’ in normalising (and perhaps even domesticating) new digital forms of content production and content consumption within the established economic order of mainstream higher education. As such this paper calls for continued attention to be paid to issues of power, profit and privilege within the continued debates over online higher education. Certainly, this is not an area of ‘change’ that is neutral, inevitable or natural. Instead, this is an area that clearly is entwined with the wider politics of higher educational reform. Most importantly, it should be concluded that the educational form of the MOOC is neither as trivial as some of its detractors might like to think, nor is it as novel and ‘disruptive’ as some of its supporters would claim. MOOCs are perhaps best understood as a conduit for long running struggles over the nature and form of higher education in the digital age. This, then, is the newsworthy ‘story’ that needs to be told, and scrutinised, about MOOCs. References Baggaley, J. (2013) MOOC Rampant. Distance Education, 34(3), pp. 368–378. Brookes, H. (1995) Suit, Tie and a Touch of Ju-Ju. Discourse and Society, 6(4), pp. 461–494. van Dijk, T. (1993) Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis. Discourse and Society, 4(2), pp. 249–283. Fairclough, N. (1989) Language and Power. London: Longman. Fairclough, N. (1995) Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Routledge. Gouseti, A. (2010) Web 2.0 and Education. Learning, Media and Technology, 35(3), pp. 351–356. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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Johnson, T. and Avery, P. (1999) The Power of the Press. Theory and Research in Social Education, 27(4), pp. 447–471. Kauppinen, I. (2013) Academic Capitalism and the Informational Fraction of the Transnational Capitalist Class. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 11(1), pp. 1–22. McAuley, A., Stewart, B., Siemens, G. and Cormier, D. (2010) The MOOC Model for Digital Practice. Charlottetown: University of Prince Edward Island. Available at: https://oerknowledgecloud.org/sites/oerknowledgecloud.org/files/MOOC_Final_0.pdf. Accessed 14 March 2014. Naidu, S. (2013) Transforming Moocs and Moorfaps into Moolos. Distance Education, 34 (3), pp. 253–255. Portmess, L. (2013) Mobile Knowledge, Karma Points and Digital Peers. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology, 39(2). Available at: http://cjlt.csj.ualberta.ca/ index.php/cjlt/article/view/705. Accessed 14 March 2014. Slaughter, S. (2004) Academic Capitalism and the New Economy. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press. Taylor, S. (2004) Researching Educational Policy and Change in ‘New Times’. Journal of Education Policy, 19(4), pp. 433–451. Thomas, S. (1999) Who Speaks for Education? Discourse, 20(1), pp. 41–56. Zutshi, S., O’Hare, S. and Rodafinos, A. (2013) Experiences in Moocs. American Journal of Distance Education, 27(4), pp. 218–227.
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