Running head: ARE MOOCS A SOLUTION TO EDUCATING THE WORLD?

Are MOOCs a Viable Solution to Educating the World?

Martina Seo

University of British Columbia

Are MOOCs a Viable Solution to Educating the World?

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With the rise of global technology and the hopes to educate to the far corners of

the earth, massive open online courses (MOOCs) may be the answer to eradicating

illiteracy and creating a universal education system to the poorest and most remote parts

of the world. MOOCs would be able to aid the 774 million adults still cannot read or

write two-thirds of them are women. (Institute for Statistics, 2014) But, with these

high expectations to expand learning electronically, there are many obstacles to overcome

in the early stages of development of MOOCs. Historically, in March, 2015 there were

just over 4,000 MOOCs globally, of which just over 1,000 were from European

institutions. (Bates, 2015) How many of these MOOCs are applicable to everyone?

Firstly, is it realistic to expect the world to align itself to a homogenized,

democratized education based on North American culture and language? Would this be

considered an imperialistic view where the developed world is imposing their knowledge

system onto the undeveloped? Secondly, English is already destroying minority

languages due to the fact it is associated with world business, successful, educated class,

would MOOCs expedite this process? "Languages are undergoing a global extinction

crisis that greatly exceeds the pace of species extinction," states David Harrison,

Pennsylvania's Swarthmore College (Rymer, 2012). Thirdly, instead of empowering the

students, would MOOCs impede learning because it would be filled with Caucasian and

North American cultural references making the non-European students feel inadequate?

Lani Gunawardena is the co-author of a forthcoming book on global culture and online

education. She said some global distance education evangelists tend to assume

everybody speaks English and has the same priorities as they do. (Rivard, 2013)

However, there are many pros in creating a universal online education such as
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eliminating world illiteracy and poverty while equipping everyone with equal opportunity

to free online schooling. But, through the cultivation of MOOCs, are we losing minority

cultures and languages at the cost of gaining a more educated world?

What is MOOC?

What is massive open online course (MOOC)? It is a model for delivering

learning content online to any person who wants to take a course, with no limit on

attendance. (EDUCAUSE Library, 2015). Background on MOOCs, the University of

Manitoba pioneered the first one in 2008 where 2,200 students signed up for this free

online course (Bates, 2015). Then, in 2011, Stanford University introduced another

MOOC focused on The Introduction to AI (artificial intelligence) with an enrollment of

160,000 students (Bates, 2015). Currently, MOOCs are mainly sourced out to the already

privileged and educated students in the world (Bates, 2015). But, to standardize MOOCs

to specifically targeting to educating all students in the world to eliminate the untaught,

we must consider what has been accomplished in the past.

Imperialistic Endeavor

It would be easy to say that MOOCs could create a learning atmosphere

encompassed with an imperialistic endeavor with altruistic intentions. What is

imperialism? Dictionary.com defines imperialism as the policy of extending the rule or

authority of an empire or nation over foreign countries, or of acquiring and holding

colonies and dependencies. If we look at it through the lens of MOOCs, what are their

roles in educating the world with one educational system? Would it be considered as

intellectual neo-colonialism as stated by some educators? (Straumsheim, 2015) For

example in Learning to Divide the World: Education at Empire's End by John

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Willinsky, he suggests by creating an education based on imperialism to create Western

triumphs where prejudice and discrimination became prevalent. Knowing the detriment

of education to colonize nations, creators of MOOCs must be aware and sensitive in

curriculum development as not to destroy offend their audience as Willinsky conveys,

we must not undivided the world, but rather embrace all the differences and protect it

from going extinct. At the same time, he includes, to educate Indians to be English in

taste, opinions, morals, and intellects and this it implies all other opinions were

considered irrelevant and unjustified. When the Europeans created us against them

mentality, they started to create this superiority complex over anyone who was not

English (Willinsky, 1998). Therefore, the West took possession of the world,

contextualizing it in terms of identity and difference, center and periphery, civilized and

primitive (Willinsky, 1998). To not repeat history, we must consider all avenues in

educating the world in a politically correct way where local cultures and languages can be

preserved and respected. This can only be accomplished the collaboration of a team of

local representatives who support and have interest in educating their population with the

MOOC designers.

On the contrary, the imperialistic view is not being imposed upon the poor and

uneducated. Robert A. Rhoads, professor of education at the University of California at

Los Angeles states 80% of the MOOCs takers are already educated and MOOCs are not

truly aimed at the disadvantaged students for democratization of higher education

(Bates, 2015). It is not the unschooled and non-English speaking students who are

enrolling in the masses into MOOCs as expected. Next, there is a huge digital divide

and not a lot of the world has access to a computer or high-speed Internet. This may be
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the reason why MOOCs are not being used by the far corners of the earth. It would cost a

large of sum of money to create technological access for the whole world to participate in

MOOCs. There would be a need for a large amount of local and online educational

supporters to help the disadvantaged and illiterate to benefit from MOOCs from aspects

of the world. This endeavor would require immense manpower and finances to achieve

in a global scale.

Expediting Extinction of Minority Languages with the Use of MOOCs

The destruction of minority languages due to the adoption of English to

participate in world business, be educated by the best educational institutions and partake

in the circles of the rich and elite, it is almost expected to be fluent in English to have a

seat at the table. How does this affect MOOCs and their goals in educating the masses in

the far corners of the earth? In the last 500 years, an estimated half of the world's

languages, from Etruscan to Tasmanian, have become extinct. (Lovgren, 2007) The

World Wildlife Fund study co-authered by Jonathan Loh states "About three-quarters of

the languages of the Americas are under the threat of extinction," he says, and "95

percent of the indigenous aboriginal Australian languages are ... declining extremely

rapidly." (Rosenthal, 2014) With the rate of extinction, minority languages are at a threat

with the globalization of education through MOOCs unless they decide to design ways to

prevent the loss of these rare languages by preservation through electronics. It is

inevitable and almost devastating to know "thousands of indigenous languages spoken

around the world are being replaced by one of a dozen or so dominant world languages

like English, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese," Loh says. (Lovgren, 2007) How do we

prevent the loss of language and culture with the rise of MOOCs?
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Curriculum developers need to be aware not all students will understand or solely

use English the dominant language and they will have to translate the lesson and

curriculum plans to better suit the students depending on their language and cultural

background. By the same token, there would have to be various contributors from local

areas of the world participating and developing their own culturally relevant issues for

their MOOCs. Would it be fair to say to be able to preserve local languages and cultures,

indigenous peoples from the area would be invited to help develop MOOCs for their own

people in partnership with creators of the program? It would take tremendous amount of

work and hours to be able to create the multitudes of MOOCs and platforms to uniquely

cater to each and every student in the world. Do students log on locally and have their

individually created MOOCs zapped right on their computer screens? Then, the question

of Internet broadband width and accessibility would come into issue. How do we mass-

produce Internet access, so everyone can have entry to a meaningful education?

Cultural Relevance

MOOCs are a great way to reach the multitudes, but to make it more meaningful;

the curriculum must be culturally relevant and speak to their audience. The North

American education is the most predominant and established one in the world including

Ivy League schools and the prestige that comes with them. But, it would be considered

irrelevant if they made references to North American culture to those who were raised in

small villages in China, Africa or India. For example, The African Virtual University

was created based on work the World Bank began in 1995 to provide education in sub-

Saharan African. It now supplies coursework that helps graduate 4,000 students a year.

It doesnt simply want to import Western-made content for its students. Instead, it wants
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to flex its own muscle by building material on its own. (Rivard, 2013) What if an

African girl looks at the readings or videos online and realizes there isnt anyone of

African decent in her courses and feels her peoples are not represented in the text? How

does that affect the learning processes in the course? If everyone in the MOOCs are

mainly of European descent, how will it be received? Would it be considered not

relatable and therefore irrelevant? There could be a loss of culture because MOOCs are

designed to assimilate all cultures into one by creating a universal education. The aim of

MOOCs is to capture and distribute the ultimate education for the world through the use

of the Internet and access to a device to the ends of the Earth. However, MOOCs

developers must create this ideal and all encompassing creation of knowledge like the

Greek God, Proteus, which can be quite impossible with the diversity of learners, cultures

and languages that cover spectrum of the world. (Raffaghelli et al., 2015) In the early

stages of MOOC development, researchers are able to collect extensive amount of data

and are able to apply this information to creating a more personalized, learner behavior

centered environment to create better self-motivation and regulation in achieving success.

(Wiebe et al., 2015) Striving to achieve perfection in MOOCs may be quite impossible.

Psychological Challenges

In Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs): Insights and Challenges from a

Psychological Perspective by Terras and Ramsay, they have identified individual

variances in skills, preferences and cognitive synopsis; engagement, motivation, learning

and performance; and the ability to monitor and appropriately respond to the demands of

both the external and internal contexts of learning. (Terras & Ramsay, 2015) To

maximize their effectiveness, educators can generate learning materials, lesson activities
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and assessment to a wide range of MOOCs audiences. MOOCs are evolving into more

complex entities to serve the needs of both learners and providers. (Terras & Ramsay,

2015) Due to the extensive data collected in the past years through MOOCs, analysts can

better predict student behavior and outcomes with the ability to geolocate the students

further allowed demographic, behavioral, and performance insights on MOOC students

based on location (Diver & Martinez, 2015). Equipped with this knowledge, there is

greater possibility to further customizing MOOCs to international students in far regions.

(Diver & Martinez, 2015) In doing so, they will embody cultural, socio-political and

discipline-specic aspects. To be successful with MOOCs, there needs to be a

foundational background on digital literacy and experience in use of devices. (Diver &

Martinez, 2015) Participatory literacy may not only facilitate MOOC use, but MOOCs

themselves may also help promote and support the development of these skills. (Stewart,

2013) Future research effort is therefore required to examine how the increasing complex

learning environments associated with MOOCs may nurture learner. By creating

MOOCs with current political issues to incorporate model design of network

communities and individual world views (Pogorskiy, 2015), designers of MOOCs can

generate interest and motivate interest in students to receive and assimilate new

information. They can customize education through electronic communications and

digital era through acknowledging worldviews of individuals and local communities

narrowing down to international educational projects (Pogorskiy, 2015).

Benefits of MOOCs
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There are multiple reasons why MOOCs would be beneficial for world education.

To begin with, they are able to provide a high quality informational guide from the best

universities in the world accessible free from any computer with Internet connection. If

the global community would able to be supplied with universal broadband, a child from

Africa to a grandmother in China would be able to learn various subjects and content at a

touch of a button. It would be a gateway to unlimited intelligence to those seeking a

higher education. Worldwide Internet access would be an incredible task to achieve, but

when accomplished, it would destroy many barriers and create a whole new playing field

for the world. To have this established, there would be a lot of training needed for local

supporters and partners in implementing such a huge program. Secondly, by connecting

the world to an online education, it would create a globalized community for sharing and

opening up a conversation in learning. MOOCs would create an extremely valuable

form of lifelong learning and continuing education. (Bates, 2015) By building a

connectedness, sociability, personal enrichment, higher learning, life long learner

(Bates, 2015), MOOCs are really furthering a richer and more global learner. Thirdly, if

MOOC curriculum developers and course designers can customize and individualize

lesson plans and platforms that are catered to their learners, they will enhance not only

the learners experience, but also break out of the shelf of conventional cookie cutter

modules and create new strategies in online, open learning. (Bates, 2015) They need to

push their envelopes and systems to learn how to create the ultimate, global, online

institution for the 21st Century learners. Lastly, if MOOCs were to attain complete

worldwide access, the globe would become an incredible online classroom with inclusive

Internet access. Students are able to log on with only a computer, smartphone or device
ARE MOOCS A SOLUTION TO EDUCATING THE WORLD? 10

with Internet connection and can achieve goal of self-paced learning, which can enhance

overall learning motivation. (Chang et al., 2015) Nevertheless, students who are not

familiar with technology may be afraid and struggle with such a learning environment

and have a higher risk of giving up on the course. (Chang et al., 2015) There would be a

need for local education supporters to help students to learn how to use technology and

engage in their coursework.

Salmon et al.s (2015) Experiential Online Development for Educators: The

Example of the Carpe Diem MOOC found MOOCs were able to disseminate knowledge

and skills to large amount of participants in a researched learning design process. The

program offered a new way of engaging new and experienced students and maybe a

feasible way to enable sustained learning changes with future research. The use the

online learning process as a vehicle for shared understanding, working together and

sustaining their ability to apply concepts. (Salmon et al., 2015) Salmon recommended

to build future MOOCs aimed at educators and a friend finder to help enable students to

form local groups to support each other. Salmon et al. also concluded by having

educators build MOOCs, they can also expand and illuminate a wider approach beyond

the educators own regular experience, enabling new and experienced academics and

teachers of all kinds to benet from well-researched and well-rehearsed, successful,

online learning design and delivery techniques and methods (Salmon et al., 2015).

There are many collaboration opportunities in international education projects with

students and teachers. (Pogorskiy, 2015) When considering individual differences each

student brings to an online course, it would diversify learning and processes by creating

online projects based on worldviews and life experiences. (Pogorskiy, 2015) It would be
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a place where great minds could come together and share their personal life aspects and

views.

Conclusion

MOOC as a viable solution to educate the world is a great concept. Conversely,

there are hurdles to overcome such as how do designers and educators come to agree on

one universal education for the masses and help eradicate illiteracy, but uphold integrity

of conserving local languages and cultures without blanketing them with a North

American, only English curriculum? The incredible diversity of languages, cultures and

personal backgrounds lead to the ever-encompassing question: Is it possible to create a

cookie cutter, one size fits all MOOC for everyone? The answer is no. We cant imagine

a holistic MOOC for everyone without trying to make it uniquely personal for each

individual user. There are many requirements for MOOCs to succeed in educating the

world such as broadband Internet access globally, which is extremely difficult and

expensive, plus the uncountable hours needed to create and collaborate to manufacture a

MOOC with all the references needed to implement such a huge program. We can hope

to preserve rare and dying languages and cultures with MOOCs if we are able to upload

them fast enough and to have their peoples trained on devices. But, this too needs

funding and research to be accomplished. If we are able to study and research further

into the effectiveness of MOOCs, there can be some concrete solutions in the future.
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