[Book Review] Reconceptualising learning in the digital age: The [un]democratising potential of MOOCs by Allison Littlejohn and Nina Hood, Springer, 2018

Ferguson, Rebecca (2019). [Book Review] Reconceptualising learning in the digital age: The [un]democratising potential of MOOCs by Allison Littlejohn and Nina Hood, Springer, 2018. Postdigital Science and Education, 1(2) pp. 569–572.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-019-00064-9

Abstract

Littlejohn and Hood bring together many lines of research and their own extensive MOOC experience as they consider the past, present, and future of the MOOC landscape. Their particular interests, as the book title indicates, are whether MOOCs have prompted new thinking about learning and teaching, and whether MOOCs have acted to democratize education. They find that MOOCs are currently used by the education sector not to reconceptualize teaching and learning but instead to reinforce and retain key aspects of conventional forms of education. For example, design and evaluation focus on standardized design and normative forms of participation, meaning that learners are encouraged to conform to the norms of formal education by submitting assignments and completing course. MOOCs are judged by similar standards to traditional courses, with high sign-up rates seen as good and high drop-out rates seen as bad. Measures of quality that are more appropriate to these new courses have been proposed but are not yet in widespread use.

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• Item ORO ID
• 66168
• Item Type
• Journal Item
• ISSN
• 2524-485X
• Academic Unit or School
• Institute of Educational Technology (IET)
• Copyright Holders
• © 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
• Depositing User
• Rebecca Ferguson