{"id":717,"date":"2020-04-21T09:17:05","date_gmt":"2020-04-21T16:17:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0115\/?p=717"},"modified":"2020-04-22T09:42:48","modified_gmt":"2020-04-22T16:42:48","slug":"addressing-barriers-to-access-in-moocs-critical-inquiry-team-blog-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0115\/addressing-barriers-to-access-in-moocs-critical-inquiry-team-blog-post\/","title":{"rendered":"Addressing Barriers to Access in MOOCs: Critical Inquiry [team blog post]"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Photo by Philipp Berndt<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0Unsplash<\/a>]\n

Our team examined <\/span>Mind Control: Managing Your Mental Health During COVID-19<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) delivered by Coursera and created by Steve Joordans, Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto Scarborough, and Director of the <\/span>Advanced Learning Technologies Lab<\/span><\/a>. Using this learning event as a case study, our team looked at the question: How do access barriers in MOOCs impact the \u201copenness\u201d and usage of MOOCs?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We believe this beginner-level course was an appropriate choice to examine openness and accessibility as its subject is of almost-universal appeal during the COVID-19 pandemic (Anderson, 2020). MOOCs have been trumpeted as a learning medium accessible to all: \u201cThe appearance and proliferation of massive open online courses (MOOCs), which are open to any Internet user, in 2011 was supposed to completely erase the boundary of unequal access to acquiring and assimilating knowledge\u201d (Semenova & Rudakova, 2016, p. 229).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Digital Divide<\/b><\/p>\n

Mind Control: Managing Your Mental Health During COVID-19 is offered as a free course. This is laudable, but it must be noted that Coursera does derive a tangible benefit from learners\u2019 registration: they are now Coursera members. This gives Coursera an opportunity to market other courses which are based on their freemium model: enrollment is free but other elements including official acknowledgement of course completion requires payment: \u201cPaid courses provide additional quizzes and projects as well as a shareable Course Certificate upon completion\u201d (Coursera, 2020). This is at odds to the original intention of MOOCs to offer educational offerings to people who are disadvantaged, since \u201cMOOC advocates suggested that MOOCs could include people who were traditionally excluded from higher education\u201d (Lambert, 2019). While over forty million people have taken its classes online, Coursera is far from an idealistic venture: the company has been valued at over one billion dollars (Lunden, 2019).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Joordans\u2019 Mind Control: Managing Your Mental Health During COVID-19 offers an accessible learning experience on a number of fronts:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n