Those who know that I'm in grad school sometimes ask what my research is about. I mumble something about MOOCs, but I really haven't always had an easy (or brief) way to answer. When I formally proposed my research to my committee early in June, I did it with a 50 page paper, an 8 minute prepared statement, and 40 minutes of answering their questions. My 50 page paper wouldn't make a very good blog post, but an edit of my prepared remarks might help to describe what I'm researching. I'll give that a try here.
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Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have drawn a great deal
of attention in the last two years. One
reason for that is that people are interested in seeing whether MOOCs can help
with some of higher education’s greatest challenges, including
1. Access
2. Costs
3. Rate of, and time to completion
·
Access, because MOOCs can reach users worldwide through the Internet, and can
serve tens of thousands of students at once, regardless of where they are.
·
Costs, because while MOOCs today are often expensive to produce, they generally do not
involve any cost to those who take them.
·
Completion, because MOOCs will probably play a role in remediation in the short term, and may increasingly be able to be taken for credit in the longer term.
Another reason that
MOOCs have drawn attention is that the set of universities most visibly
involved are the elite U.S. universities who generally have engaged in online
education in only limited ways until now. When Harvard, Stanford, Princeton and Penn make major moves into online education, the higher education community takes notice.
Enthusiasm for
MOOCs in these early days is high, but so is MOOC skepticism. Past large scale
online education efforts such as Columbia’s Fathom have failed so it is
reasonable to wonder whether MOOCs will turn out to be merely a higher
education fad that will eventually fade away.
In addition to skepticism, there are concerns. Some college
leaders, especially those at less well funded institutions that have not been
early adopters, have expressed concerns about the impact of MOOCs on their
business model. With MOOCs being produced at some of the top ranked
universities in the world, they are concerned that their business model is at
risk. When their own students take Poetry from Penn, Circuits from MIT, and
Justice from Harvard, all at no charge, how will that affect their perceptions
of cost and value at their home institution when they return to class the next
semester? Will they expect education to be free, taught by celebrity faculty, available
on their schedule, and in convenient 15 minute segments complete with nifty
graphics? There may be valid reason for concern.
Since 2012, more than 80 elite U.S. and international
universities have developed and distributed course content in the MOOC format,
but their motivations are not yet entirely clear. This leads directly to my research questions
regarding these early adopters.
1. First,
What are they trying to achieve?
2. Next,
How will they assess success?
3. And finally, what business model or value proposition are they planning?
Interest in these questions is high.
Versions of my study questions can be seen frequently in higher education and
popular press headlines, and heard in discussion among faculty and educational
technology staff. Conferences in academic and IT circles increasingly have
topics and tracks that address MOOCs and their role. I believe that these research questions are
of significant interest to many within the higher education community.
The literature on MOOCs so far includes
a substantial and growing amount of research on learning theory as it applies
to MOOCs. Some have studied learning outcomes in online education since well
before the days of MOOCs. Others have studied some of the unique attributes of
MOOCs (such as their massive nature, their use of social network concepts to promote interaction, etc.) and how they can be used well to foster good learning outcomes. Little or no research has been published on
MOOC decision process, however. This is not surprising, given how new the
phenomenon is.
To attempt to answer my three research questions, I propose a
qualitative, multiple site holistic case study to investigate and analyze the
goals, motivations and decision processes at elite, early-adopter U.S.
universities as they consider investments in, and possible future roles of, MOOCs
at their institutions. Interviews
with individual faculty members involved in planning or teaching in the MOOC
format as well as with faculty members who are willing to share concerns and
skepticism about MOOCs, will be performed. In
addition to faculty, others will be interviewed including educational
technologists who help to prepare MOOCs, and students who have taken MOOCs or
have helped as teaching assistants. Finally,
and most importantly, I will interview key decision makers such as chief
academic officers and faculty advisors on MOOCs. I will
also study related documents at each study site, looking for documentary
evidence that helps to answer the three research questions.
Inductive data
analysis approaches will be applied to the interview transcriptions and collected documents, and then
patterns and themes in the data will be noted and analyzed. An effort will also
be made to collect data representing multiple perspectives. For instance,
minutes from a faculty meeting in which objections were raised would help to
provide balance and avoid the “echo chamber” effect that could occur when
interviewing only those who have committed to the stated university direction on
MOOCs. Strong patterns found at
study sites will be considered for their contribution to that site’s plans and
decisions regarding the role of MOOCs. Looking across the three
studied sites, common patterns and stark contrasts will also be noted.
I was able to
perform a pilot study at Penn, which was very helpful in fine tuning my
research protocol and practicing the process of writing up findings and
performing analysis. Penn was a rich site in that it was a very early adopter
and a prolific creator of MOOC content. Since then, Several
good study sites have been identified, and contacts at several of them have
been showing signs of support.
(Candidate sites not named here until arrangements are finalized)
In conclusion,
I propose to study the goals, assessment and decision processes, and business
models at at three elite early adopters of MOOCs. I plan to
use a multiple site holistic case study approach relying on interviews and
documents as evidence. I believe that my research questions are not yet well
studied, but are of broad interest and therefore worthy of investigation.
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