This session is scheduled for 3:30-4:20 in the Hirshon Suite (205), 55 W. 13th Street
The report of MOOCs’ death was an exaggeration. They may no longer be featured in the Times on a weekly basis and some companies (cough … Udacity … cough) may have abandoned their original missions to provide free education. But hundreds of universities on dozens of platforms continue to offer thousands of courses. And enrollments totals have entered the tens of millions (usual caveats about “completion” still apply). While the hype around MOOCs has died down, their continued, indeed, strengthened presence means we must continue to pay them mind. In fact, it may be more important than ever for the humanities to critically consider the present and future of MOOCs as administrations start seeking concrete evidence of return on (an often large) investment.
In this session, I’d like to consider a burgeoning trend in MOOCs as they enter their latest phase: the push toward specialization(s). In 2014, Coursera introduced series of courses–dubbed
Specializations–that
promised to teach “marketable” skill sets in the most popular fields. Conspicuously absent from these tracks was the humanities. Of Coursera’s initial 18 and current 27 specializations, zero came from disciplines or interdisciplines in the humanist fields.
Think what you will of MOOCs, but I am dismayed (if not surprised) by the humanities’ absence from this new evolution in massive, open courses and suspect many of you, too, see it as troublesome. To address this trend, I propose that we discuss strategies for future participation in or conscious resistance of specialization(s). I see this session as an opportunity to think through the skill sets and specialties the humanities have to offer (they are many, I believe) and the promises and pitfalls of participating in structured series of MOOCs may mean for the field–especially given that this turn is unabashedly driven by promoting fee-generating “verified” certificates. While this session will start as a discussion, I hope it can plant the seeds for a collaborative, written strategy document–a white paper, perhaps.
