MOOCs more disruptive than open access, report says


Massive open online courses (MOOCs) will be more disruptive to education than open access scholarship, a new report predicted.

open-massive-online-course
MOOCs have mass market appeal that journal do not.

The two popular developments in the open education movement were pitted against each other in a recent study published in SAGE Open and written by York University professor Richard Wellen.

While both methods share the same seemingly altruistic goal, they are going about accomplishing that goal in very different ways.

Open access publishing aims to spread ideas and knowledge through providing research for free, unrestricted by paywalls and subscription prices. While this is an idea valued by many in academia, those who are most interested in freely reading this content already can do so on campuses and in research libraries.

Scholarly publishing’s existing business model is built on small audiences, and it has “evolved over many decades in response to the idiosyncratic nature of the academic publishing market,” the report stated.

“In effect, the end user (the academic researcher) is relatively insulated from the market,” Wellen wrote. “In addition, the value of scholarly journals is hard to observe except by small groups of experts working within narrow specialties. For all these reasons, market forces arguably cannot exert a very strong downward pressure on prices.”

Educators can join the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #eCNMOOCs.

See page 2 for how MOOCs are part of the “unbundling process”…

MOOCs, on the other hand, are designed for the mass market.

They are also one element of a larger socioeconomic shift, the report said. Universities are outsourcing more academic services than ever before to independent, mostly profit-driven, entities.

MOOCs are big part of this “unbundling” process.

“According to disruptive innovation theory, one of the great benefits of academic unbundling is the unleashing of market forces in the sphere of higher education,” Wellen wrote.

Despite their uncertain future and inability so far to turn a substantial profit, MOOCs have emerged as an important player in the marketplace. Investors are pouring millions into the free online courses, and they have ended up hovering around the center of local and national education policy debates.

When outlining his education plan in August, President Obama referenced competency-based learning at Southern New Hampshire University, online courses at Arizona State University, and Georgia Tech’s MOOC-like master’s program.

“Such examples show that the prospect of academic unbundling has already begun to bring changes to state or system-wide governance of higher education institutions in order to accommodate the independent provision of more portable academic content across institutions,” Wellen wrote.

Follow Jake New on Twitter at @eCN_Jake, and join the conversation with #eCNMOOCs.

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