Internet Learning Volume 3, Number 2, Fall 2014 | Page 8

Internet Learning
dents watch these videos and demonstrate
what they have learned via quizzes and papers.
Although the quality of the video and
related content provided is high, this delivery
model is very much based in traditional
models of instruction, and does not include
the notions of openness and connectivism
outlined by Siemens and Downes. Indeed,
the content on each of the major sites is not
“open,” as pervasive copyright notices make
clear.
Coursera, edX, and Udacity, the
three major players in the MOOC space,
have put a lot of money and effort into developing
high quality proprietary content,
which is housed in learning environments
that each bring their own unique and proprietary
“secret sauce.” A variety of forms of
machine intelligence have been developed as
part of these systems to assess student performance.
The social structures of the major
MOOC projects are essentially similar, with
students participating in online forums,
study groups, and in the case of Coursera
and Udacity, organized student meet-ups.
Content-wise, Coursera emphasizes video,
with students watching recorded lectures
from field experts as the main substance
of the courses. At the time of publication,
Coursera had over four million students enrolled
in 400 courses, while edX and Udacity
had reached 1.75 million students, across 60
courses and 30 courses, respectively.
In response to what many see as
problems in the pedagogical, financial, and
other models of the high profile MOOC
providers, a curious form of social commentary
has emerged — the “Anti-MOOC,”
a term coined by Audrey Watters that refers
to online courses that are specifically positioned
as experiments in online learning
that, in well-defined ways, do not ascribe to
the models used by the Courseras, Udacities,
and other large providers.
Anti-MOOCs have a unique role
as counterpoint to the more high-profile
online learning projects. As massive open
online courses continue their high-speed
trajectory, many educational leaders and
theorists feel that there is a great need for
reflection — especially that which includes
frank discussions about what a sustainable,
successful model looks like. In this context,
many Anti-MOOCs are high-level experiments
in online learning created expressly
to generate a counterpoint to MOOCs and
a basis for social interaction and commentary.
In some ways, this may reflect the
view of many experts that the pace at which
MOOCs are developing is too rapid for genuine
analysis; alternatives need to be created
to provide comparison points. Others
maintain that MOOCs are not the disruptive
technology initially touted, and that the
current landscape is uniquely (and probably
only temporarily) open to new ideas in online
learning.
When MOOCs were Young
When Stephen Downes and George
Siemens coined the term in 2008,
massive open online courses
were conceptualized as the next evolution of
networked learning. The essence of the original
MOOC concept was a web course that
people could take from anywhere across the
world, with potentially thousands of participants.
The basis of this concept is an expansive
and diverse set of content, contributed
by a variety of experts, educators, and
instructors in a specific field, and aggregated
into a central repository, such as a website.
What made this content set especially
unique is that it could be “remixed” — the
materials were not necessarily designed to
go together but became associated with each
other through the MOOC. A key component
of the original vision is that all course
materials and the course itself were open
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