The traditional view of higher education within contemporary society is perceived as participating through an educational process of obtaining certain qualifications and demonstrating why an individual wants to study at their chosen institution. Similar to the secondary curriculum, students learning within the tertiary education are most likely to learn their required content through a teacher-lecture environment with a variation of class sizes in comparison to secondary and primary education (Gaebel, 2014). Tertiary education according to (World Bank, 2016) is defined as post-secondary education, in which qualifications can be obtained through public or privatised higher education institutions.
A growing alternative to the highly selective process of higher education, especially regarding higher education within universities, are MOOCs otherwise known as Massive Open Online Course (). Many universities offer MOOCs to students as an alternative to the arguably more demanding nature of traditional full-time education. MOOCs providing it’s content on an online platform allows an unlimited number of people to participate within a course regardless of previous qualifications acquired (Gaebel, 2014). The flexibility of MOOCs allow all learners to fit active learning around their otherwise demanding work life’s, allowing them to gain educational qualifications while maintaining a full-time means of income. Massive open online courses allow for students to study in a flexible and a freeing way, allowing students to study on their schedules and demands (). The flexible nature of MOOCs has been supported by unconventional teaching methods that deter from ‘traditional’ educational methods, for example moral philosophies based on the foundation of reconstructionism would argue that achieving democratic socialism through equal opportunity should be the main goal for education (Gutek, 1997). From a political perspective, reconstructionism’s focus on equality can be demonstrated through MOOCs’ being unselective and free to all individuals who want access to the educational content (Gaebel, 2014). It’s evident that educational inequality is still prevalent within modern society, mainly due to factors such as socioeconomic class within society (Vardi, 2012). Even within highly democratic environments, educational inequality has been proven to be prevalent due to the rise in the privatisation of education (Vardi, 2012). Contemporary statistics have shown that over fifty percent of GCSE entries from privatised institutions achieve an A or A* grade, in comparison to the national average of twenty percent (Besa, 2019). Many have argued that the access to the highest ‘quality’ of education simply due to the restrictions of limiting socioeconomic factors is inherently immoral, due to the shared belief that education should not be reserved for those in elite positions within society (Vardi, 2012).
MOOCs emphasise the importance of independent learning , self-study and allowing development of their individual knowledge with the aid of quality materials. Although it’s important to note that independent learning does not equate to complete isolation or limited lecturer-student interaction, but more of a smooth guiding through the learning process by providing course materials such as video and audio presentations, interactive video calls and collaboration between other students (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2016). This can be seen as an advantage as the support provided to individuals who actively seek it would receive a more personal and interactive experience, in comparison to traditional higher education experiences in which students may be intimate by the large number of student groups (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2016). In fact it could be argued that the focus of engagement would encourage individuals to communicate with other students using the technology available to them. The learner centred approach of MOOCs would allow individuals to understand how they learn best and allow the discovery for constructing their own environments for optimum learning without the influences of negative factors such as direct pressure, educational comparison and indirect competition with other students (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2016).
Another alternative to the traditional processes of higher education are SPOC courses which stand for Small Private Online Courses (Burge, 2015). Unlike MOOCs, SPOCs are more selective in regards to the choice of students who get the opportunity to get access to the content of the course. It could be argued that the selective nature of SPOCs could perhaps add a higher quality and validity to the qualifications obtained through SPOCs rather than MOOCs as there has been a set of guidelines in order to gain access to the course (Burge, 2015). Perceiving the qualifications obtained through SPOCs as higher quality has been stated to be indefinitely linked to elitism within privatisation and elitism within national education (Burge, 2015). Despite this, the learning style between SPOCs and MOOCs still follow similar methods of teaching as they both consist of practical work, personal interactions, video lectures and collaborative project work. SPOCs being accessible through an online platform aids it’s ethos of learning needing to adapt to the individual and demonstrates the more flexible nature of siuhc courses in comparison to traditional higher education (Burge, 2015). MOOCs and SPOCs are direct examples of innovation in education in terms of adhering to changes within contemporary society such as the rapid technological advancement and increased globalisation that has affected the dynamics of education (Burge, 2015). Despite the many advantages of these alternatives, recent statistics have shown that a very small percentage of individuals are actually finishing the courses to completion. The small completion rate can be due to factors of the demands being less pressurising than the traditional university system, perhaps being too flexible and lenientant on participants (Burge, 2015). Another factor has been argued to be linked to the qualifications acquired through such courses as being viewed as less valid or important than degrees attained through a traditional educational system ().
In relation to recent events, the likelihood of online-based courses such as MOOCS and SPOCs replacing the traditional university system has become a more prominent issue within modern society. This has been demonstrated through the majority of traditional higher education institutions having to transfer their resources on online platforms given the highly dangerous and infectious circumstances caused by Covid-19.. It has been argued that the major shift to online platforms from universities could change the social view towards the amount of quality the qualifications obtained through alternative methods are perceived since methods used by universities are similar to methods found in MOOCs and SPOCs. Despite this, it has been argued that the lack of essential pedagogy in MOOCs could undermine the effectiveness of them as having an absence of a serious foundation of theoretical concepts and strategies behind certain methods (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2016).
References
Vardi, M.Y., 2012. Will MOOCs destroy academia?. Communications of the ACM, 55(11), pp.5-5.
Yuan, L. and Powell, S.J., 2013. MOOCs and open education: Implications for higher education.
Gaebel, M., 2014. MOOCs: Massive open online courses. EUA.
Margaryan, A., Bianco, M. and Littlejohn, A., 2015. Instructional quality of massive open online courses (MOOCs). Computers & Education, 80, pp.77-83.
Fox, A., 2013. From moocs to spocs. Communications of the ACM, 56(12), pp.38-40.
Kaplan, A.M. and Haenlein, M., 2016. Higher education and the digital revolution: About MOOCs, SPOCs, social media, and the Cookie Monster. Business Horizons, 59(4), pp.441-450.
Burge, J., Fox, A., Grossman, D., Roth, G. and Warren, J., 2015, February. SPOCs: what, why, and how. In Proceedings of the 46th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (pp. 595-596)