'Dark' side of the MOOC: Shedding light on the construction, culture and consequences of an emerging social movement
type: CreativeWork
description: Massive Open Online Courses (‘MOOCs’) emerged on the global higher education scene in 2012. Champions of these largely free, video-based courses – offered by some of the most elite universities in the world – claim they can democratise higher education. Critics suggest that if MOOCs were to be a disruptive force in higher education, they would surely be its demise. Buried amid this pro- and anti-MOOC discourse is talk of a ‘MOOC movement’ that has gained and lost global popularity over time. The original contribution of this thesis is its illumination of the ‘dark’, previously unexamined aspects of the MOOC movement: its construction, culture and consequences. In adopting a social constructionist perspective and a mixed methods approach, the thesis demonstrates how the MOOC movement is constructed through the deliberate messaging of providers, and how meaning is negotiated and reconstructed by users at the individual, interpersonal and broader social level. It also provides an explanation of what impacts different constructions and degrees of affiliation with the MOOC movement have on the culture and consequences of MOOCs more broadly, and vice versa. Data from focus groups and an online survey suggest that, far from just media spin, there are users who believe in and identify with the MOOC movement. The identifiers tend to perceive MOOCs as a learning community, while the non-identifiers regard them as a learning tool. User attitudes and experiences also suggest that by and large, the MOOC movement is achieving the goals set by providers to increase access to the ‘world’s best’ higher education and promote anywhere, anytime learning, though perhaps more in terms of convenience than as a means to overcome geographical constraint. These predominantly free and unaccredited courses have also been shown to have high value among users, encourage peer support, and display strong potential for application in non-education settings. However, not all MOOC successes are entir…
abstract: Massive Open Online Courses (‘MOOCs’) emerged on the global higher education scene in 2012. Champions of these largely free, video-based courses – offered by some of the most elite universities in the world – claim they can democratise higher education. Critics suggest that if MOOCs were to be a disruptive force in higher education, they would surely be its demise. Buried amid this pro- and anti-MOOC discourse is talk of a ‘MOOC movement’ that has gained and lost global popularity over time. The original contribution of this thesis is its illumination of the ‘dark’, previously unexamined aspects of the MOOC movement: its construction, culture and consequences. In adopting a social constructionist perspective and a mixed methods approach, the thesis demonstrates how the MOOC movement is constructed through the deliberate messaging of providers, and how meaning is negotiated and reconstructed by users at the individual, interpersonal and broader social level. It also provides an explanation of what impacts different constructions and degrees of affiliation with the MOOC movement have on the culture and consequences of MOOCs more broadly, and vice versa. Data from focus groups and an online survey suggest that, far from just media spin, there are users who believe in and identify with the MOOC movement. The identifiers tend to perceive MOOCs as a learning community, while the non-identifiers regard them as a learning tool. User attitudes and experiences also suggest that by and large, the MOOC movement is achieving the goals set by providers to increase access to the ‘world’s best’ higher education and promote anywhere, anytime learning, though perhaps more in terms of convenience than as a means to overcome geographical constraint. These predominantly free and unaccredited courses have also been shown to have high value among users, encourage peer support, and display strong potential for application in non-education settings. However, not all MOOC successes are entir…
author: Longstaff, Emily
language: en
keywords: Massive Open Online Courses, MOOC, movement, culture, social construction, unintended consequences
date published: 2016
date modified: 2026-07-24T00:54:57Z
provider: Australian National University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Australian National University

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/1885/112466