MOOCs inside Universities
An Analysis of MOOC Discourse as Represented in HE Magazines
Steve White, Manuel Leon and Su White
Web Science Centre for Doctoral Training, University of Southampton, University Road, Southampton, U.K.
Keywords: MOOCs, Content Analysis, University Stakeholders, HE Magazines.
Abstract: Digital news media discourse on MOOCs has been pervasive in educational publications over recent years,
and has often focused on debates over the disruptive potential of MOOCs at one extreme, and their survival
at the other. Whether such articles reflect the concerns of academics and other internal university
stakeholders is difficult to ascertain. This paper aims to determine the main concerns of internal university
stakeholders in terms of their MOOC development and implementation work, and whether these concerns
are reflected in the mainstream educational media. The study combines data from 2 previous studies (a
content analysis of MOOC literature, and a grounded theory case study of internal university stakeholders)
to establish key themes of concern for those working on MOOCs in Higher Education. An analysis of these
themes in 3 educational media publications is then conducted for the year 2014. The findings indicate a
clear focus in education media and among university stakeholders on new teaching practices and working
dynamics in Higher Education as a result of involvement in MOOC development work. We argue that for
many working on MOOCs in Higher Education, the debate about the future of MOOCs is over, and that
more practical concerns of appropriate implementation and effective working practices are of greater
importance.
1 INTRODUCTION
Discourse on Massive Open Online Courses
(MOOCs) has permeated digital news media,
especially in Higher Education publications (Bulfin,
Pangrazio, & Selwyn, 2014). Although some events
may reflect a decline in the interest of news media in
MOOCs (Kolowich, 2014a) since Pappano’s famous
announcement of the “Year of the MOOC” (2012),
there seems to be a sustained feed of MOOC stories
in all sorts of written media. This is especially so in
digital media, as suggested by Downes’ (2014)
tracking of MOOC mentions since 2012.
In many Higher Education Institutions, discussions
of MOOCs are no longer confined to educational
technology departments. Instead, these
conversations have spread to faculties at all levels.
Beyond the debates over their disruptive potential on
one extreme, and their survival on the other
(Hollands & Thirthali, 2014; Kolowich, 2013),
MOOCs are often the topic of everyday
conversations in many universities, since they are no
longer a subject of speculation and prediction, but a
matter of present practice.
MOOCs have effects not only on the learners who
take them, but also on the highly varied teams of
university staff involved in their creation and
delivery. As soon as the governance body of a
university makes the decision to go ahead with a
MOOC project, a number of concerns and
conversations arise within the institution. An action
plan is designed, often in the absence of protocols
and previous experience. The allocation of budgets,
roles, and responsibilities becomes a task which is
new to most members of the MOOC team.
Universities often share experiences of these
processes in interim reports (Edinburgh, 2013;
Ithaka, 2013; London, 2013), explaining the
organisational challenges and implications
encountered when embarking on MOOC
development and delivery. These implications for
institutions are also explained in a number of white
papers (Voss, 2013; Yuan and Powell, 2013),
containing sets of recommendations for faculty
boards and other decision making bodies.
This study aims to inform both practitioners and
decision makers about the main current concerns in
universities regarding MOOCs. The intention is to
provide an account of these concerns in terms of
109
White S., Leon M. and White S..
MOOCs inside Universities - An Analysis of MOOC Discourse as Represented in HE Magazines.
DOI: 10.5220/0005453201090115
In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2015), pages 109-115
ISBN: 978-989-758-108-3
Copyright
c
2015 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
what motivates universities to attempt to incorporate
MOOCs into their educational offerings, and how
this motivation is changing or evolving as
understandings of MOOCs change, and as the
courses themselves evolve. It will also attempt
to determine the main perceived implications of
embarking on such an endeavour, and what aspects
of MOOC implementation are most discussed both
in the media and in HEIs.
2 RELATED WORK
Much meta research exists which reviews different
aspects of the state-of-the-art of MOOCs by
systematic analyses of the publications on MOOCs,
both academic and non-academic. Perhaps one of
the most cited is Liyanagunawardena et al. (2013),
which classifies and categorizes 45 peer-reviewed
studies on MOOCs, and identifies important
research gaps such as assessment and intercultural
communication issues. Further to this study,
Mohamed et al. (2014) ran a template analysis on a
broader set of papers, identifying assessment and
accreditation as key issues. BIS (2013) included
journalistic articles, academic papers and blogs to
explore perspectives on the impact of MOOCs on
both institutions and learners, identifying a high
degree of both enthusiasm and skepticism. Other
studies focus on more popular sources, such as
Bulfin et al. (2014), which analyzed news media
discourse related to MOOCs to examine the
acceptance of this form of education among
professional communities and a more general
audience.
The current study drew on commonalities in the
findings of a content analysis of grey literature on
MOOCs (León, 2013) and a grounded theory study
of internal HE stakeholders involved in MOOC
development (White, 2014) to establish a set of 12
themes related to MOOC development in HE. A
keyword search of a corpus of educational media
articles published in 2014 was then conducted, and
the search results analysed for their relevance to
these themes. This study focuses on Higher
Education Institutions, showing primarily their
perspective. As such, the perspectives of learners, or
other stakeholders such as platform providers
(Coursera, Futurelearn, EdX) are outside the scope
of this study.
3 METHODOLOGY
This study was carried out in two stages, as shown in
Figure 1 below. The first stage involved an
examination of two independent studies in which a
convergence was identified. This convergence
consisted of a set of themes that fed the second
stage. The second stage involved a quantified
examination of the occurrences of these themes in a
corpus of specialist HE magazine articles in 2014.
Figure 1: Stages of the methodology
3.1 Desk Study, Content Analysis
In summer 2013, a desk study was carried out in
order to identify current debates on MOOCs at that
time (León, 2013). By then, there was already a
broad body of literature, both grey and academic
peer-reviewed that contributed to a polarised debate
between enthusiasts and skeptics (BIS, 2013). The
main search strategy used for this study consisted of
following reputed learning technologists in a social
site called Scoop.it, and gathering their curations. In
this way, all sources had already passed at least one
filter of relevance and rigour. Those identified by
Daniel (2012) as being written with an intention of
promoting MOOCs for profit rather than offering
objective accounts of their pedagogical potential
were disregarded.
Once the sources were gathered, they were analysed
with a method inspired by Krippendorf´s (2012)
Content Analysis, and Herring´s (2010)
recommendations for carrying out content analysis
on literature published online. The themes identified
in the project were MOOC quality, sustainability,
CSEDU2015-7thInternationalConferenceonComputerSupportedEducation
110
and impact, and debates were explored in a corpus
of 60 articles in total.
3.2 Interviews, Grounded Theory
The interview-based study used grounded theory
analysis of interview data to explore motivations
behind MOOC creation and implementation at the
University of Southampton from the perspective of
internal (university staff) stakeholders in the
development process (White, 2014). The university
currently runs 8 MOOCs and has been a member of
the FutureLearn consortium, a profit making MOOC
venture with a current membership of 40 institutions
(FutureLearn, 2014), since its launch in September
2013. In the study, 12 individuals were interviewed
as representatives of four main internal stakeholder
groups: management, content specialists (lecturers),
learning designers, and course facilitators and
librarians. A two-stage process for stakeholder
identification (following Chapleo and Sims, 2010)
was used.
In the absence of formal institutional policy on the
specific aims of MOOC development, stakeholders
were interviewed in order to reveal their perceptions
of the aims of the university in developing MOOCs,
and the stakeholders’ own aims in participating in
the development process.
3.3 Theme Selection
Similarities and differences exist in the aims,
procedures and applications of grounded theory and
qualitative content analysis. However, as recognised
in Cho and Lee (2014), commonalities exist in terms
of coding and categorising data, and identification of
underlying themes. Examination of the desk study
and grounded theory interview data at this level of
analysis revealed 12 common themes relevant to
institutional motivations in MOOC development and
the implications of these developments:
• MOOCs as impact on teaching practice: A
frequently cited idea was that the development
and implementation of MOOCs will have some
influence on the way teaching is conducted in
HEIs (whether online or face-to-face).
• MOOCs as HEI’s social mission: Different
HEIs (and the media which comment on them)
perceive a range of ways in which an
institution can fulfil its social mission, for
example by disseminating knowledge,
supporting learning, or fostering research.
• MOOCs as institutional strategy for keeping up
with HE evolution: Perceptions of institutional
motivations for MOOC development were
varied, but were often seen as simply a way for
institutions to keep pace with broader
developments in higher education.
• MOOCs as the avant-garde of new online
education provision: Some observers of
MOOCs perceive them as an opportunity to
experiment and be creative in higher education,
rather than as a more instrumental means to
some strategic goal.
• MOOCs as learner data providers: The
interviews and articles touched on the potential
value produced by various kinds of learner data
represented in MOOCs.
• Learning analytics inform learning design:
This theme focuses on a more specific use of
learner data than the above. The potential for
leveraging learning analytics was cited as a
motivation in the development and use of
MOOCs.
• New relationships between departments, new
work dynamics: A wide range of changes in the
way individuals, departments, and institutions
act and interact as a result of MOOC
development were cited in the literature review
and interviews.
• MOOCs as new business models: This concern
was widely cited in interviews and the
literature, although limited levels of consensus
or certainty emerged.
• MOOCs as means to engage with large
numbers of learners: HEIs are attempting to
grapple with the challenges of massive learner
numbers and learn from the experience.
Although massiveness has regularly been cited
as an obvious attraction in terms of business
models, it was also seen as an important and
distinctive feature of MOOCs in more general
educational terms.
• MOOCs as marketing: The potential of
MOOCs to act as marketing tools was cited in
the previous studies as a key institutional driver
for MOOC development, and linked to the
general sense of ‘hype’ surrounding them.
• MOOCs and accreditation: Mention was made
in the literature and interviews of the options
for and challenges of providing accreditation
for MOOCs, and the uncertainty that exists in
this area.
• MOOCs and completion rates: Completion
rates for MOOCs were a concern that arose in
the previous studies, though opinion varied on
the importance of completion rates for this kind
MOOCsinsideUniversities-AnAnalysisofMOOCDiscourseasRepresentedinHEMagazines
111
of course, and the comparability of MOOCs
and more traditional courses in this respect.
3.4 The Sample
The study focused on articles from 3 mainstream
educational media publications which have high
visibility on the Web (rather than peer-reviewed
journal articles). These media (Times Higher
Education, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and
Inside Higher Education) are widely seen as
“authoritative sources on higher education” (Bulfin
et al., 2014), and provide insight into the extent to
which concerns of HE professionals related to
MOOCs are reflected in mainstream media.
All magazine digital editions contained a search
engine, which facilitated the task of searching for the
keyword “MOOC” in each. Only articles which
included some substantive focus on the relevant
MOOC themes were included - those which
contained only passing references to MOOCs, or no
discussion of the selected themes were disregarded.
In total, a corpus of 106 articles from the three
magazines was analysed.
4 FINDINGS
Figure 2 depicts the frequency with which each
selected theme occurred in the corpus of articles.
The overwhelming majority of instances relate to
teaching practice (detected in 57 articles - more than
half of the sample). There were frequent discussions
of the perceived pedagogical benefits for institutions
when engaging in MOOCs. For example, Levander
(2014) reports how Rice University has developed a
portfolio of over 40 MOOCs motivated by what they
call assets, both in terms of materials and teaching
experience: building high quality content that can be
reused and repurposed, and providing valuable
experience of how to develop and deliver these
materials. Talbert (2014) also shares his experience
of screencasting for flipped classrooms as a novel
pedagogical approach in university lectures. Many
of the articles in which this theme was identified
report in one way or another how teachers are
adapting their teaching practices to cater for new
audiences, delivering through new communication
channels and platforms, and attempting to overcome
the different challenges that MOOCs pose to
educators.
Figure 2: Theme frequencies in article corpus.
The theme of MOOCs as catalysts of change in
relationships between departments and work
dynamics in universities was also frequently cited
(30 instances). Descriptions of developments in the
ways educational materials are collaboratively
produced within institutions were common, with
MOOC projects requiring cooperation between
teaching staff, educational technologists,
researchers, librarians, media producers, legal
advisors and others. Dulin Salisbury (2014), for
example, highlights the need for “team-based course
design”, whilst Straumsheim (2014a) reports on
work to involve local community stakeholders in
some aspects of course design at the University of
Wisconsin.
Discussion of MOOC business models was the third
most frequent theme in the sample literature (in 19
articles). Articles included discussion of more
flexible and open MOOC provider platforms
(Straumsheim, 2014c), possible approaches to the
use of advertising in MOOCs (Kim, 2014c) and
more critical views of the commercial imperatives
behind MOOCs and their impact on higher
education (Straumsheim, 2014d). The fourth most
frequent theme concerned the role of MOOCs as a
field for experimentation and innovation in online
education. A number of articles (n=11) explored
opportunities for creativity in education via MOOCs.
Parr (2014a) for example describes efforts by the
Open University to focus on social elements of
MOOC course development, and also to explores the
possibility for creating “nanodegrees” involving
very short courses on specific subjects.
CSEDU2015-7thInternationalConferenceonComputerSupportedEducation
112
The theme of MOOCs and accreditation was
mentioned in 9 articles, and was addressed in a
number of ways. Straumsheim (2014b) discussed the
potential flexibility in course offerings and
accreditation which MOOCs may afford, while Kim
(2014d) notes the possibility for competency based
assessment and credentialing.
Two related themes were mentioned in the same
number of articles: ‘MOOCs as learner data
provider’ and ‘Learning analytics informs learning
design’. These themes were mentioned in 6 articles
respectively, some in the same article (Eshleman,
2014; Kim, 2014b). Eshleman (2014) highlights the
value of qualitative learner data for use in a case
study of her own institution, whilst also recognising
the contribution which learning analytics can make
to track student activity online. Kim (2014a) argues
that blended and online learning can provide
valuable data for learning analytics studies into the
learning process, and that this is a far richer source
of data for education research than a simple focus on
pass rates or other similar learning outcomes.
Straumsheim (2014d), however, cautions against
reliance on an abundance of data produced in
MOOCs, as interpreting such raw data can be
difficult and time consuming.
The theme of MOOCs as marketing for HEIs was
also mentioned in 6 articles. Kolowich (2014b) notes
the possibility of raising the profile of Rice
University among pre-college students, while Tyson
(2014) speculates about the relationship between
international student recruitment for US institutions
and MOOCs.
5 DISCUSSION
Perhaps the most salient result of this study is the
prominence of mentions of the impact of MOOCs on
teaching practice in universities. Findings in similar
studies place the pedagogical dimension of MOOCs
in a lower position in terms of presence in analysed
corpora. For example, in the ranking of MOOC
issues in media by Bulfin et al. (2014), pedagogy
occupies sixth position, behind other issues such as
the Higher Education marketplace and the free and
open nature of MOOCs. The above study, however,
analysed a broader sample which included non-
specialist newspapers, and included articles from
2013. A reason for this shift in focus could be our
institutional perspective and focus on MOOC
phenomena: as mentioned in the introduction, this
project has been carried out in a university, it is
addressed at universities, and seeks to understand
what happens in universities. An alternative
interpretation could be that of a tendency towards
the end of a debate on the disruptive nature of
MOOCs.
Changes in departmental relationships and working
dynamics was also an important theme identified in
both the stage 1 studies and stage 2 corpus analysis
of articles from 2014. In the 2014 article corpus
analysed in stage 2 of this study, discussions of the
new relationships between departments and new
work dynamics of institutions involved in MOOC
development were identified as the second most
frequently occurring theme. This perception of
MOOCs as a dynamic for internal institutional
change was also identified as a significant concern
in interviews with university stakeholders in the
grounded theory study from stage 1 of this research.
This seems to reflect a recognition that undertaking
MOOC development projects influences the way
individuals, groups and departments interact and
collaborate on such ventures. The corpus of
educational media sources report quite widely on
these issues, elaborating on examples of
collaborative practice or the ways in which
individual or departmental interactions have changed
or need to change in future. For universities, these
changing work dynamics are perceived to be an
important implication of participation in MOOC
development, perhaps because of the relative novelty
of MOOC development processes and initiatives.
The focus on this issue in the educational media
perhaps reflects further emphasis on MOOCs as a
practical concern, rather than a more speculative
debate over their potential disruptiveness or survival
in HE in the short-term.
6 CONCLUSIONS
This study has shown the main concerns of internal
university stakeholders regarding MOOCs as
reported in specialist media. It seems that recent
media articles show greater concern with what
universities might do with MOOCs than what
MOOCs will do to universities, as has been a
concern in the past. An active rather than passive
attitude has been identified among educators and
within universities more broadly, as if educators
have tired of speculating on what will happen to
Higher Education as an industry with the advent of
MOOCs, and decided to get their hands dirty by
experimenting with new pedagogical approaches.
MOOCsinsideUniversities-AnAnalysisofMOOCDiscourseasRepresentedinHEMagazines
113
2012 was described as the year of the MOOC
(Pappano, 2012). Other ed-tech commentators have
described 2013 as the year of the anti-MOOC
(Waters, 2013; Bates, 2013). From what has been
found in this study, 2014 could be described as the
year of MOOC pedagogy.
MOOCs are not only building new relationships
between learners and educators, but also between
different roles and departments at universities. This
paper has shown that the media is also reporting new
work dynamics as a consequence of the inclusion of
MOOCs in the educational offerings of universities.
MOOCs seem to require the creation of new teams
and roles that had not previously existed, while more
established roles are being altered at various levels
of the organisational hierarchy of universities.
Media articles on academic activity do not, of
course, necessarily portray accurately the realities of
academic practice. However, the convergence found
in this study between the views of internal university
stakeholders and broader opinion in the educational
media seems to suggest that developing MOOCs is
currently more strongly associated with educational
innovation than marketing, democratisation, or new
business models.
REFERENCES
Bates, T. (2013). Look back in anger? A review of online
learning in 2013. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/1c9qvv0.
BIS (Department of Business, Innovation and Skills)
(2013). The maturing of the MOOC: literature review
of massive open online courses and other forms of
online distance learning. Retrieved from
http://bit.ly/1c9qvv0.
Bulfin, S., Pangrazio, L., & Selwyn, N. (2014). Making
“MOOCs”: The construction of a new digital higher
education within news media discourse. The
International Review of Research in Open and
Distance Learning. Retrieved from
http://bit.ly/1AYkD3r.
Chapleo C. & Sims, C. (2010) Stakeholder Analysis in
Higher Education. Perspectives. 14 (1) pp. 12-20.
Cho, J., & Lee, E. (2014). Reducing confusion about
grounded theory and qualitative content analysis:
similarities and differences. The Qualitative Report. 19
(64) pp.1-20.
Daniel, J. (2012). Making sense of MOOCs: Musings in a
maze of myth, paradox and possibility. Journal of
Interactive Media in Education, 3. Retrieved from
http://bit.ly/19KGOzt.
Downes, S. (2014) Measuring MOOC Media. Retrieved
from http://bit.ly/1DGWvmc.
Dulin Salisbury (2014) Impacts of MOOCs on Higher
Education. Inside Higher Education. Retrieved from
http://bit.ly/1nA2vYA.
Edinburgh, U. of. (2013). MOOCs @ Edinburgh 2013 –
Report # 1 (p. 42). Edinburgh. Retrieved from
http://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/6683.
Eshleman, K. (2014) Are MOOCs Working for Us? Inside
Higher Education. Retrieved from:
http://bit.ly/1BJXLq0.
FutureLearn (2014) About. Retrieved from.
https://www.futurelearn.com/about.
Herring, S. C. (2010). Web content analysis: Expanding
the paradigm. International handbook of Internet
research (pp. 233-249). Springer Netherlands.
Hollands, F. M., & Thirthali, D. (2014). MOOCs:
Expectations and Reality. Full Report. May 2014.
New York, New York, USA. Retrieved from
http://bit.ly/1sLBfoH.
Ithaka S+R. (2013). Interim Report: A Collaborative
Effort to Test MOOCs and Other Online Learning
Platforms on Campuses of the University System of
Maryland. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/17AB5up.
Kim, J. (2014a) 6 Big Takeaways from the edX Global
Forum. Inside Higher Education. Retrieved from
http://bit.ly/1r1cxUX.
Kim, J. (2014b) Here Come the Data Scientists. Inside
Higher Education. Retrieved from
http://bit.ly/Vxh425.
Kim, J. (2014c) MOOCs and Bad Online Advertising.
Inside Higher Education. Retrieved from
http://bit.ly/1AsogfW.
Kim, J. (2014d) Saltatory. Inside Higher Education.
Retrieved from http://bit.ly/1LjJJuu.
Kolowich, S. (2013). The MOOC “Revolution” May Not
Be as Disruptive as Some Had Imagined. The
Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from
http://bit.ly/1vlHWTH.
Kolowich, S. (2014a). The Year Media Stopped Caring
About MOOCs. The Chronicle of Higher Educaction.
Retrieved from http://bit.ly/1jFIeeV.
Kolowich, S. (2014b). Competing MOOC Providers
Expand Into New Territory—and Each Other’s. The
Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from
http://bit.ly/1vP3gff.
Krippendorff, K. (2012). Content analysis: An
introduction to its methodology. Sage.
León, M. (2013) Reactions on the emergence of MOOCs
in Higher Education Reactions on the emergence of
MOOCs http://bit.ly/1ztBu9C. in Higher Education.
Liyanagunawardena, T. R., Adams, A. A., & Williams, S.
A. (2013). MOOCs: A systematic study of the
published literature 2008-2012. The International
Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning.
Retrieved from http://bit.ly/1vlI85o.
London, U. of. (2013). MOOC Report 2013. Retrieved
from http://bit.ly/1qaMvGY.
Levander, C. (2014). It´s All About Assets. Inside Higher
Education. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/1nbGejR.
Mohamed, A., Amine, M., Schroeder, U., Wosnitza, M., &
Jakobs, H. (2014). MOOCs A Review of the State-of-
the-Art. In CSEDU (pp. 9–20).
Pappano, L. (2012). The Year of the MOOC. The New
York Times, 2(12), 2012.
CSEDU2015-7thInternationalConferenceonComputerSupportedEducation
114
Parr, C. (2014a) Making MOOCs social is the next
challenge. Times Higher Education. Retrieved from
http://bit.ly/1xk6Vq8.
Straumsheim, C. (2014a) All Things In Modulation. Inside
Higher Education. Retrieved from
http://bit.ly/1sFk9tJ.
Straumsheim (2014b) A Platform For All Purposes. Inside
Higher Education. Retrieved from
http://bit.ly/1pN6OQK.
Straumsheim (2014c) Data, Data Everywhere. Inside
Higher Education. Retrieved from
http://bit.ly/1z5xScV.
Straumsheim (2014d) Profit or Progress? Inside Higher
Education. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/187FshT.
Talbert, R. (2014) Making Screencasts. The Pedagogical
Framework. The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Retrieved from http://bit.ly/1DGYmr6.
Tyson, C. (2014) From MOOC to Shining MOOC. Inside
Higher Education. Retrieved from
http://bit.ly/1vlJ1uL.
Voss, B. D. (2013). Massive Open Online Courses
(MOOCs): A Primer for University and College Board
Members. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/1EdSO8j.
Waters, A. (2013) Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2013: MOOCs
and Anti-MOOCs. Retrieved from
http://bit.ly/1jG6CgI.
White, S. (2014) Exploring stakeholder perspectives on
the development of MOOCs in higher education a case
study of the University of Southampton. (MSc
Dissertation) http://bit.ly/1FDNJaZ.
Yuan, L., & Powell, S. (2013). MOOCs and Open
Education: Implications for Higher Education. CETIS.
Bolton. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/1AYlWzn.
MOOCsinsideUniversities-AnAnalysisofMOOCDiscourseasRepresentedinHEMagazines
115
