Two major factors in realizing that the internet cannot be the United Nations’ answer to the inalienable right to education are the purveyors of knowledge (i.e. the scholars and teachers) and the students  they hope to reach and teach. How anyone with a modicum of education can begin to consider that the internet is a panacea for the democratization of education on a global scale is lost in the utopian plot lines of a reality the kind of which is reserved mostly for politicians seeking popularity.  Believing that Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), open data, and well-meaning scholars have the potential to make online education universal is continuing the traditional beliefs that have brought education systems to their current place in society.

Looking at the realities, it must be obvious that the variety in how we educate even within one country is reflected in the endless choices offered online. Private schools, charter schools, public schools, home-schooling, residential preparatory academies, sports institutions, night-schools, apprenticeship programs, internships, travel, etc. are all easily imagined in the minds of most people. These represent physical places where one becomes a student in the learning process often under the watchful eye and expertise of a teacher, facilitator, professor, master, or coach.

However, in the virtual realm of the internet, both the teacher and student are basically as faceless as the location where they meet. This may be the most conflicting issue that distributed and open learning has to grapple with in its development and evolution. This virtual place needs somewhere in reality to ground the relationship that has strong psychological traditions in the dialectic. That is to say that face-to-face learning is so deeply ingrained in our psyches as both teachers and students that the very design of online education ties itself subconsciously to recreating the teacher-student relationship.

MOOCs are essentially a representation of classroom design replete with lecture, demonstration, and virtual space for questions and feedback in most cases. Although the creation of MOOCs carried positive intentions to provide free education, they have evolved to a great extent as “edutisements” for the institutions that have created them. Their design has done a great service to popularize the professors who “star” in them, but many have also inadvertently supplied students with a “snapshot” of curricula trapped in time (especially for introductory and survey style courses). These MOOCs do not need much updating or maintenance and in that sense are not individualized or even aware of their audience. The idea of fulfilling any of the students’ needs cannot be a factor in the design of distributed or open learning as it is impossible to know who the “audience” of students will be.

The collection and interpretation of open data might shed some possibilities of better aligning the “lesson” to suit the student, however, without employing the capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) to act as intermediary between student and teacher, the individuation and personalization of online learning will remain a one-sided affair. Even with the ability to collect open data and use AI, online learning systems will still be restricted by the creators’ own biases and subsequent algorithms. Online learning will always be in effect the gamification of education where students achieve the next level of learning by successfully navigating the programming of the course creators. As someone once said, “Computers are only as smart as those who program them.” In the case of emerging AI, it can still be argued that the AI of a computer program will be limited to what the programmer can imagine that can be done with the collection of massive data sets.

Scholars themselves should become increasingly aware that the virtual locations being created on the internet are increasing at an exponential rate. In 2000, the total number of websites ranged at around 17 million. Today that number is 1.7 billion which has factored in the more recent phenomenon of website consolidation (Internet Live Stats).  This factor alone should be enough for anyone creating anything on the internet that, not only would the potential audience be highly variable, but the likelihood of knowing one’s audience would be impossible. It is therefore incumbent upon the “online scholar” to select an “audience”. The scholar can be as general or as specific as the demands require. For instance, writing an article to promote an online educational tool for elementary school math teachers will take on a different tone, use of vocabulary, and persuasiveness than publishing a research study on the healing properties identified in the digestive habits of the praying mantis. It is the inherent nature of human socialization that the online world of distributed and open education takes on a design that emulates our desire to communicate clearly and with precision. This means that the onus is on the student to find the online learning environment that best suits them. It also means that the teacher should not endeavour to design their course of study to suit “everyone”, and should instead focus on what they consider to be their expertise and passion.

However, the universal school does exist when ones considers the whole of the internet and the myriad ways in which it is used to teach and to learn. It is only in the minds of commercial interests that the ownership of learning exists. The collective for them is only in response to shareholders’ demands. But, the hearts of most teachers and scholars would agree that sharing knowledge online is an act of releasing ownership in the hopes that it might be absorbed, adapted, and changed to make the world a better place.

 

References

Atenas, J., Havemann, L., & Priego, E. (2015). Open Data as Open Educational Resources: Towards Transversal Skills and Global Citizenship. Open Praxis, 7(4).  https://doi.org/10.5944/openpraxis.7.4.233

Couture, M. (2017, July 12). Academic Publishing at a Crossroads. University Affairs. Retrieved from http://www.universityaffairs.ca/opinion/in-my-opinion/academic-publishing-crossroads/

Rohs, M., & Ganz, M. (2015). MOOCs and the Claim of Education for All: A Disillusion by Empirical Data. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 16(6). Retrieved from  http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/2033

Veletsianos, G., & Shaw, A. (2018). Scholars in an increasingly open and digital world: Imagined audiences and their impact on scholars’ online participation. Learning, Media and Technology, 43(1), 17–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2017.1305966