Audrey Watters Wrestles with MOOCs

August 11, 2012 | Filed in: Open Education

View the story "Audrey Watters Wrestles with MOOCs" on StorifyAudrey Watters Wrestles with MOOCsI chatted with the globe-trotting Audrey Watters about the institutional questions that MOOCs raise. Watters is an ed tech journalist and the author/editor of Hack Education.Storified by Pete Rorabaugh · Sat, Aug 11 2012 09:35:14Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), as they are situated both inside and outside of traditional higher education institutions, naturally raise questions about those institutions. My recent article, "Occupy the Digital: Critical Pedagogy and New Media," began to uncover some of those questions. In that article, I assert "that academic work must be useful beyond its tower and that digital culture offers new opportunities to achieve that goal." Perhaps MOOCs are a way to take academic work beyond its traditional boundaries. Or perhaps MOOCs are so extra-institutional that they will work no real changes on higher education.

In her article, "Considering Coursera's Expansion," Audrey Watters ponders some of the same questions. She reminds us that "it’s not clear yet how MOOCs will evolve as they expand to new disciplines and new universities and/or how these MOOCs will change higher education in turn." From within the institution and from without, educators, pedagogues, and watchful journalists are waiting to find out what will come of higher education.

I recently invited Audrey Watters to an interview over Twitter to discuss what road MOOCs might be paving for us all. Both of us will also be participating in MOOC MOOC, an experimental, investigative one-week course hosted by Hybrid Pedagogy. This interview is an invitation behind the critical lens of MOOC MOOC.

@audreywatters You've been publishing @hackeducation for several years. Have you been surprised at the intensity of #MOOC as a term?Pete Rorabaugh@allistelling I'm a little surprised that w/ the history of MOOCs (since 2008) & longer history of online edu that *suddenly* this is so bigAudrey Watters@audreywatters Right. It does seem to have hit a Gladwell point. Is there an event you tie that too? The start of Udacity?Pete Rorabaugh@allistelling I do think it was the Stanford AI class that clearly "went viral" and I have to wonder how much is connected to larger +Audrey Watters@allistelling (Silicon Valley) concerns that we don't have enough engineersAudrey Watters@audreywatters Also, do you think it's bc suddenly a discussion of a MOOC is really about lots of other things. Not discrete?Pete Rorabaugh@allistelling Right. It's a question of technology, of student loan debt and high tuition, of the Khan Academy-video-crazeAudrey Watters@audreywatters Right. That's what I mean. The same way that talking about a work of art becomes . . . about therapy or history.Pete Rorabaugh@allistelling I think that there's a certain anti-university/anti-edu sentiment in Silicon Valley too (see: Peter Thiel), and I wonder +Audrey Watters@allistelling how much folks are really hoping that, for that reason, the university is "disrupted"Audrey Watters@audreywatters Curious. Meaning that the push from that sector is an economic one? Or an antsy-ness to train people a new way?Pete Rorabaugh@allistelling I think that the business model we're seeing by Udacity - i.e. recruitment - is an indication of thatAudrey Watters@audreywatters Is it anti-intellectualism then? Or a desire to get teachers "out of the way" and let the ID people do the work?Pete Rorabaugh@allistelling I do think there's some anti-intellectualism, yes. This isn't about exploring ideas in the way of connectivist MOOCs surelyAudrey Watters@allistelling And I think that the pedagogy - watch videos, take multiple choice quizzes - is an indication that these courses are +Audrey Watters@allistelling retreading old practices rather than really rethinking how the technology can transform how we teach/learnAudrey Watters@audreywatters But they work right? I mean, it's not like Coursera or any other instit. MOOC just feeds you documents from a tray.Pete Rorabaugh@audreywatters OK, re: Coursera and Udacity. You tried both. How much time did you invest in your Udacity course (that was 1st, right?)Pete Rorabaugh@allistelling I made it about halfway through the class -- yes, the Udacity CS 101 courseAudrey Watters@allistelling this tension fascinates me too, particularly the ways in which we're seeing the cMOOCs' contributions ignored or erasedAudrey Watters@audreywatters This kind of tension bw corp or uni MOOCs and cMOOCs is at the heart of my questions, really.Pete Rorabaugh@allistelling I thought the concerns raised by @lisamlane re: Wikipedia were telling too http://bit.ly/Rn0Gv0Audrey Watters@audreywatters @lisamlane Wow. Haven't seen that source. Will come back to it. I found that marker on the @wikipedia article too. Strange.Pete Rorabaugh@audreywatters When you look at the contributions from Downes & Siemens, there's a conscious pedagogy to it. Did you feel that in Coursera?Pete Rorabaugh@allistelling No, not really - although I do see a lot of variation depending on the professor. @drchuck's class seems pretty self-awareAudrey Watters@allistelling but other professors really just seem to be recording their lectures, adding quizzes and *presto* it's a MOOC!Audrey Watters@audreywatters Right. Have not seen much of this, but also haven't been looking. When you look at the ones that are getting attn +Pete Rorabaugh@audreywatters + they have to be good, but I guess there's a whole swath of them that I haven't burrowed into.Pete Rorabaugh@audreywatters That's also sometimes what I fear. It was part of @slamteacher's point in "Broadcast Education."Pete Rorabaugh@allistelling the latest Coursera classes are interesting as these are using the peer-grading system. Raises a whole new set of questionsAudrey Watters@audreywatters Agreed. I need to read more on this, but seems like a communal vote up/vote down system. Not sure that's ped. sound either.Pete Rorabaugh@audreywatters Are there topics, behaviors, understandings that corp. MOOCs work better for, others that cMOOCs work better for?Pete Rorabaugh@allistelling I think that that's been the argument, in general, in edu - some disciplines work ok w/instructionist practices, some not…Audrey Watters@audreywatters Right. It's the ed school debate bw constructionist teaching and, I guess, proscriptive teaching. But that reveals my bias.Pete Rorabaugh@allistelling it's my bias too as a writing/literature person, i confessAudrey Watters@allistelling I'm reminded of this NYT article http://nyti.ms/rpfKV5 re: STEM dropoutsAudrey Watters@audreywatters That's an issue I keep circling around. A cMOOC works b/c the "student" is invested, motivated. The corp. MOOCs have to +Pete Rorabaugh@audreywatters +contend with students who may be trying, eventually, to "get credit." Issues of motivation and relevance are central here.Pete Rorabaugh@allistelling I agree. I think a lot of the hype about these courses reshaping higher ed fails to address this very thingAudrey Watters@allistelling & I think there's such a diverse set of "students" in these cMOOCs, many of whom (in my experience) already work in the fieldAudrey Watters@allistelling that they're taking the class in. (that was particularly the case with the original Stanford AI MOOC)Audrey Watters@audreywatters I have to recognize it as subjective, and try to understand the other side. To be fair are there some topics that require+Pete Rorabaugh@audreywatters +a more linear path of instruction, aren't there? (Should say that @Jessifer vigorously disagrees with me here).Pete Rorabaugh@allistelling I don't know if that's really the case. Why can't we take a constructionist approach to computer (or other) science?Audrey Watters@audreywatters This was our exact debate. I go into lightly, I guess I would argue that even the framing of a set of problems can be linear.Pete Rorabaugh@audreywatters (watches while @Jessifer puts you in his column on this debate)Pete Rorabaugh@allistelling This is where I see Silicon Valley's view of "scaling" as skewing edu debates here; far easier to scale instructivism, right?Audrey Watters@audreywatters That's true. Not sure I fully grasp what scalable means, unless it is just another way to talk about commodification.Pete Rorabaugh@allistelling Well, I think connectivist MOOCs "scale" networks, connections; the corp MOOCs just spin up more servers and the lecture hallAudrey Watters@audreywatters I have kept you longer than I expected to. My apologies. Time for one more question?Pete Rorabaugh@allistelling sure (and thanks… this has been fun, even with the 140 character restriction)Audrey Watters@audreywatters Last (and say as much or as little as you'd like) Q: What can MOOCs learn from nontrad., informal sites of learning+Pete Rorabaugh@audreywatters +that they haven't already. I think about learning that people WANT to do, to learn how to cook, to exercise, etc.Pete Rorabaugh@allistelling i think one of the keys will be the social piece: how do we connect learners in meaningful ways w/ one anotherAudrey Watters@audreywatters So the best way to do it is social?Pete Rorabaugh@allistelling i'm gonna go out on a limb and say that the ol' discussion forum isn't really the best way to do so :)Audrey Watters@audreywatters Ha! I don't know, that's a pretty creaky limb.Pete Rorabaugh@allistelling Heh. I see Coursera in particular as replicating Blackboard: one tab for assignments, one for discussions, etcAudrey Watters@audreywatters Another important question that the estab. raises: you can't just learn what you want. Some things you HAVE to learn.Pete Rorabaugh@allistelling and that in turn raises questions about "what is the purpose of higher ed" too. What do you HAVE to learn in college?Audrey Watters@audreywatters Exactly! Central. What do you ever HAVE to learn? Part of our postindust. culture to predict boxes that need filling.Pete Rorabaugh@audreywatters Ok. Interesting. This is key. You had a better experience with Coursera than Udacity, right? Or was that just circumstances?Pete Rorabaugh@allistelling I completed the Coursera CS class; I'm not sure the experience was necessarily better.Audrey Watters@allistelling Udacity feels less university-ishAudrey Watters@audreywatters Ok. So might not be tied to the course.Pete Rorabaugh@allistelling folks in the humanities departments better have a good answer to that question (or help reframe the discussion), I fearAudrey Watters@audreywatters Agreed. Wdn't have recognized w/o your tweet, but that's a central question we are committed to on @HybridPed.Pete Rorabaugh@audreywatters Did you see this article? Related. http://chronicle.com/article/Survival-Strategy-for/133309/Pete Rorabaugh@allistelling learning to love to learn - how can we focus on that (well before university level too).Audrey Watters@audreywatters Agreed. With big payoffs. Instead, we institutionalize a culture of hating school, of schools as prisons.Pete Rorabaugh@audreywatters Would like to talk about this more later. Don't want to keep you.Pete Rorabaugh@allistelling I'm looking forward to the MOOC MOOC - hopefully we'll tackle all this and moreAudrey Watters@audreywatters Yep. Best to keep some of this for the things itself. The nature of MOOCs, I suppose. #knowledgespillagePete Rorabaugh@audreywatters I really appreciate your giving me this time Audrey. Especially when you were travelling.Pete Rorabaugh@allistelling of course! I'm glad we had this chat via Twitter tooAudrey Watters@audreywatters Me too. Count on seeing it again. You can say that you were behind the curtain!Pete RorabaughTo join the conversation on MOOCs, read "The March of the MOOCs: Monstrous Open Online Courses", follow @moocmooc and #moocmooc on Twitter, and visit www.MOOCMOOC.com.

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Tags: MOOC, MOOCs, Audrey Watters, Pete Rorabaugh

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Audrey Watters Wrestles with MOOCs