This document discusses how Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) were intended to redistribute educational opportunities and wealth more evenly worldwide. However, the summary finds that:
1) MOOCs are primarily being used by those who already have a college degree, not disadvantaging populations.
2) Venture capitalists are investing in MOOCs not for education, but because they generate huge amounts of user data that has value for targeting ads and predictions.
3) The biggest beneficiaries financially of MOOCs and data analytics will be large corporations providing these services, not students or historically underprivileged groups.
This document discusses how Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) were intended to redistribute educational opportunities and wealth more evenly worldwide. However, the summary finds that:
1) MOOCs are primarily being used by those who already have a college degree, not disadvantaging populations.
2) Venture capitalists are investing in MOOCs not for education, but because they generate huge amounts of user data that has value for targeting ads and predictions.
3) The biggest beneficiaries financially of MOOCs and data analytics will be large corporations providing these services, not students or historically underprivileged groups.
This document discusses how Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) were intended to redistribute educational opportunities and wealth more evenly worldwide. However, the summary finds that:
1) MOOCs are primarily being used by those who already have a college degree, not disadvantaging populations.
2) Venture capitalists are investing in MOOCs not for education, but because they generate huge amounts of user data that has value for targeting ads and predictions.
3) The biggest beneficiaries financially of MOOCs and data analytics will be large corporations providing these services, not students or historically underprivileged groups.
Redistributed Knowledge Leads to Surprisingly Little Redistributed Wealth
A Surprising Consequence of Current Instructional Technology H. Christopher Erlin California State University, Monterey Bay
Running head: Redistributed Knowledge
Redistributed Knowledge Leads to Surprisingly Little Redistributed Wealth One of the most significant technological developments in education in the last few years is the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). The design of the MOOC allows a much wider audience to benefit from a single instructional design. While their access and design makes them appealing and easily available, their efficacy, in terms of instructional design principals are often less impressive. (Margaryan, A, 2015). One primary stated intention of the expansion of MOOCs has been to bring quality learning to those historically unable to access this level of education, and through this, to level the worldwide educational and thus economic playing field. With better educational opportunities come better employment prospects, and better economic health. However, while this effort to redistribute the educational commodity may have foundations in philanthropy and equity, in practice, the newly created opportunities for wealth will not substantially benefit this historically underprivileged class, and rather will remain largely in the hands of the same, privileged populations that have been in positions of power for decades. In 1969, when the British Open University began, the stated mission was lofty and philanthropic: The first, and most urgent task before us is to cater for the many thousands of people, fully capable of a higher education, who, for one reason or another, do not get it (Konnikova, 2014). The concept of the MOOC has been crafted, in many ways, from this same kernel idea as the Open University and with the same intentions for public good through education. The premise of the MOOC movement is as commendable as it is democratic: quality education should not be a luxury good. (Konnikova, 2014). However, in practice, very little of the power and benefit of the MOOC has trickled down to the disadvantaged as intended. Dr. Sebastian Thrun, cofounder of Udacity, and famous for one of the earliest MOOC implementations of top quality education when he opened his Stanford
Running head: Redistributed Knowledge
University course on artificial intelligence in 2011, is on the forefront of bringing MOOCs to popular education. He has seen the tool implemented in a number of different venues and had access to substantial data on users, but he is not optimistic about its egalitarian benefit. "The basic MOOC is a great thing for the top 5 percent of the student body, but not a great thing for the bottom 95 percent," says Dr. Thrun. (Selingo, 2014) Countries where the greatest disparity exists between the educated and uneducated had high hopes for the MOOC. In countries like Brazil, China, India, and South Africa, only 5% of the country had college degrees, and thus MOOCs might bring greater equity through access to education. However, in studies of some larger MOOCs in 2012-2013, those same countries mirrored a discouraging overall trend, that 80% of the MOOC students already have a degree of some kind. (Selingo, J. 2014) As is so often the case, while the goals may be heartfelt and philanthropic, the implementation follows the financial opportunity. Business in the United States, and many other developed countries, are betting on the value of MOOCs by investing millions of dollars in their implementations. Venture capitalists have invested over $100 million dollars in just two of the big players in the MOOC game, Coursera and Udasity. (Hepler, 2013). Courseras CEO, and ex-Yale President, Richard Levin, sees MOOCs not as a replacement of higher academia at all, rather Its aim is to supplement the existing pedagogy, with relevant exposure to industrycentric knowledge (Targeted News Service, 2014). For a number of years, weve heard that graduates are entering the work force ill prepared for the roles needed in todays business economy. Levins plan for Coursera seems to suggest that this platform will target skills to fix that gap between academic preparations and the needs of industry. However, based upon surveys of employers and staffing companies, explicit skill deficiencies arent what new graduates are lacking. More than twice as many respondents claim
Running head: Redistributed Knowledge
that applicants are lacking communication skills, and organizational and interpersonal proficiencies rather than technical skills. (White, 2013). Yet, when this researcher performed a search for courses that address communications on the Coursera website, only 18 course options come up, out of their advertised 400+ courses. Thus, it seems, there is misalignment between what industry wants, and what the industry leading MOOCs are providing. Venture capitalists arent in the business of making financial investments on businesses that miss the mark. So if MOOCs are utilized by the already established rather than the disenfranchised, not intended to replace academia, and only peripherally address the organizational and communication skills most wanted by employers, what value is hidden in the MOOCs that isnt visible to the public eye? The answer is very likely big data. With the advent of computers, internet, mobile devices and the associated individual breadcrumbs left in our daily use of these now ubiquitous tools, a massive amount of data about people, their interests and their activities is available. 90% of the data in the world today was created in the last two years and there will be 44 times more of it by the year 2020, according to a 2011 McKinsey Global report, Big Data: The Next Frontier for Innovation, Competition, and Productivity. This is big data, and it is, many believe, the future. (Gobble, 2013) MOOCs are computer based. Therefore they create data. A student using Coursera to build their own pseudo-degree in computer engineering wants that data tracked. The student intends to offer those courses as evidence of his or her employability and qualification. Employers want the highly trained and best qualified, but in the new world of MOOCs, they can no longer rely upon the traditional pedigree of Harvard or Stanford as the only validation; employers must consider training from these non-traditional educational avenues like MOOCs. This poses a problem for employers. First, how do they qualify and compare the various non-traditional educational
Running head: Redistributed Knowledge
mediums? Is a computer science Coursera course equivalent to a similarly titled Udacity course? Are those equivalent to a seemingly comparable course at CSUMB? Someone has to build a means of gathering the data that people will be claiming as evidence, collating that data, ranking or rating that data for value, validating that data and synthesizing that data into a digestible snapshot for employers to use as a hiring template, or academic institutions to use in acceptance. This is a huge pile of data that has real relevance and value, and there is a significant and necessary need for analytics to synthesis it and digest it. While the data created by this new educational pathway is helpful in verifying education, that isnt the only value of the data; the massive amounts of data on users, interests and capabilities is a treasure in and of itself. It isnt unique to MOOCs, rather it is everywhere in business today. It is the new gold rush. Businesses are salivating at what they can get from the data. Retailers track our purchase history, and then target advertisements to promote repeat buying or cross-selling similar products. Decisions about which ads to present are made based upon predictive technologies. When one hundred customers who have bought a particular 6 items then purchase a particular 7th item, retailers target all other customers who have bought those 6 items and try to encourage them to buy the 7th item. This is a simplified example of the monetization of big data that is arguably the biggest focus of US Business today. To give a sense of scale, earlier it was identified that venture capitalists have invested about $100 million in just some leading MOOCs, and this might sound significant. However, investments in big data and analytics, over the past few years, have risen to over thirty times as much, over $3 billion dollars, and are continuing to rise. Business analysts predict that soon the big data service industry will reach $11 billion. (VC Funding Trends in Big Data, 2013).
Running head: Redistributed Knowledge
The vast treasure troves of data that are created have apparently significant future-value to marketers and others projecting future value of this as-yet-un-refined data. But just as in the California gold rush of the 1800s in which the real winners werent the miners, but those supporting miners selling shovels and such, there is a huge financial investment and opportunity beyond the data. The process of taking the data, categorizing it, ordering it, and sifting through it to find relevant trends and making data-based predictions is called analytics. The analytics industry, that of mining the ore to produce gold so to speak, is projected to reach over $100 billion in the coming years. (VC Funding Trends in Big Data, 2013). The new financial opportunities associated with this analytics market will surely benefit some; but the benefit is predicted to be investors, investment banks, start-up companies, existing, nimble data processors, and computer companies and potentially large scale data managers like IBM, Accenture, HP, Fair Isaac, etc. (Jennings, A, 2013), not the uneducated, underemployed original targets of the MOOC opportunity. So, while MOOCs are significant and popular, and predictions are that it will contribute in a meaningful way to economies around the world, this new way to redistribute knowledge is likely to be less effective at redistributing wealth than intended. The billions of dollars generated from MOOCs will continue to propagate their growth and maintenance, but likely as much for the data and associated analytics as for the actual educational value. These financial gains will not benefit uneducated mechanics from Brazil, or rice farmers from China who suddenly are able to earn university-like diplomas and become white-collar professionals; because data shows most of them still arent able to access the educational platform. Even if they are among the small percentage of non-degree holders that do access it, the instruction itself isnt as highly effective as it was original touted, due to questionable instructional design. And lastly, the metrics for
Running head: Redistributed Knowledge
treating these new educational pedigrees have yet to be designed, and thus cannot possibly have been universally adopted to accept this new learning as a viable justification for a whole new career opportunity for the Brazilian dreamer. Instead, the money will remain in the hands of the class that has held the money for the last decades, the investors, investment banks, a few agile entrepreneurs and the big technology corporations.
Running head: Redistributed Knowledge
Resources Ex-yale president richard levin says massive open online course is the key to bridge the gap between industry and academia.(2014, Nov 06). Targeted News Service, Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1621759754?accountid=10355 Gobble, M. (2013). Big data: The next big thing in innovation. Research Technology Management, 56(1), 64-66. Hepler, L. (2013, November 22). Coursera lands $20 million in new funding, despite online education and MOOC business stumbles - Silicon Valley Business Journal. Retrieved November 30, 2014. Jennings, A. (2013, December 23). My 2014 Big Data Predictions; Heres' to the Winners. Retrieved December 2, 2014, from http://www.fico.com/en/blogs/analyticsoptimization/my-2014-big-data-analytics-predictions-heres-to-the-winners/ Konnikova, M. (2014, November 7). Will Moocs be Flukes? Retrieved November 29, 2014, from http://www.newyorker.com/science/mariakonnikova/moocs-failure-solutions Margaryan, A. , Bianco, M. , & Littlejohn, A. (2015). Instructional quality of massive open online courses (moocs). Computers & Education, 80, 77-83. Selingo, J. (2014). Demystifying the mooc: Education life supplement. New York Times, ED.23. VC Funding Trends in Big Data (IDC Report) - Experfy Insights. (2013, September 14). Retrieved November 30, 2014, from http://www.experfy.com/blog/vc-funding-trends-bigdata-idc-report/
Running head: Redistributed Knowledge
White, M. (2013, November 10). The Real Reason New College Grads Cant Get Hired | TIME.com. Retrieved November 30, 2014, from http://business.time.com/2013/11/10/thereal-reason-new-college-grads-cant-get-hired/