1. creative commons (BY NC SA) flickr photo shared by Michael Grimes Are Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) delivering the promise of global education empowerment? Dr Vivien Rolfe Associate Head of Dept. BBAS Open Educator vivrolfe.com @vivienrolfe

2. Our vision is a highly-educated society in which opportunity is more equal for children and young people no matter what their background or family circumstances. (Dept. of Education UK 2014) …ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. (UNESCO 2015) Promises of education equality

3. What is open education? Free from cost and freely available to the user MIT Open sharing of course materials 2000 Creative Commons Open license 2001 Wikipedia Founded 2001 Open CourseWare Consortium 2005 OpenLearn at Open University 2006 iTunesU 2007 2008 – 2012 Jisc UKOER funding cMOOCs in Canada (‘Connectivist’ – online learning networks and communities) 2009

4. MIT Open sharing of course materials 2000 Creative Commons Open license 2001 Wikipedia Founded 2001 Open CourseWare Consortium 2005 OpenLearn at Open University 2006 iTunesU 2007 2008 – 2012 Jisc UKOER funding MITx / Coursera / Udacity xMOOCs (learning platform; Coursera £60 million+ venture capital funding) 2012 UK FutureLearn xMOOC 2013 (£74 million’ £40K per course) cMOOCs in Canada (‘Connectivist’ – online learning networks and communities) 2009 What is open education? Free from cost and freely available to the user-ish

6. xMOOC claims

7. But are they delivering? 2013-2014 systematic review of published literature Synthesis of reports and blog articles 2014 interviews and interpretation

8. In total, 68 research articles had explored (ALL) MOOCs. 45 focused on means of gathering and analysing learner data. 12 reported MOOC enrollment data and learner behaviour. 8 explored new pedagogies and styles of learning and assessment. 3 looked at equality and Inclusivity of learners. Rolfe 2013 OpenEd conference Utah; Rolfe 2015 EURODL paper

9. How diverse are MOOC learners? Massive global reach. 91 platform-based courses reached 42,844 (median enrolments of 4,500 to 226,652) (Jordan 2014). Massive numbers drop out. A completion rate of 6.5% (Jordan 2014). Diversity? Academically qualified individual (Aiken et al 2013; Kop & Carroll 2012; DeBoer et al 2013). Diversity? A skew toward dominating nations such as English speaking US and UK (DeBoer et al 2013). Few overall learners from Africa and Asia (Liyanagunawardena et al 2013a).

10. What about equality and inclusivity? Tensions between facilitators and learners yet (Mackness et al 2010). Learners need access to the internet and be digitally literate to participate (Yuan & Powell, 2013). Educational support and technological infrastructure is not there in less developed countries (Liyanagunawardena et al 2013b).

11. Quality - “It is massively variable of what they are trying to achieve and the quality of the content”. Lack of discourse - “If you are really saying that you want the open web to in some way blend work with higher education as a whole then we should be having these conversations”. Ethics - “I suspect a lot of it is they are not aware of what the ethical issues are”. Learner experience - “You have nothing that creates a common sense of “this is how you learn together”. You just throw people in and they either swim or they bugger off”. Privacy - “If we don’t think the companies won’t exploit the data around education in a different way, we are also acting stupidly”. Interviewee responses Rolfe 2014 OpenEd conference Washington

12. Rolfe 2015 MOOC book chapter in press Ethics of MOOCs

13. Rolfe 2015 Speaking Openly web project; Jan 2015 Bath Uni; May 2015 Bristol Uni)

14. Open education has great potential to enhance education equality. xMOOCs misrepresent the notion of ‘openness’ and have yet to deliver their claims. In research we need to reach those who are unable to, or have yet to access MOOCs. Only then can we address equality, diversity and inclusivity. Next steps? Develop ‘ethical common ground’ to ensuring educators are not abusing their positions of trust for ALL learners whether studying ‘on campus’ or ‘on line’.

15. Dr Viv Rolfe vivrolfe.com @vivienrolfe Open Educator National Teaching Fellow Next up? Global OpenEd conference Vancouver Nov 2015