Teachers - There has been resistance among staff in some of the US universities

EUA has published its second Occasional Paper on the topic of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).
Authored by Michael Gaebel, Director of the Higher Education Policy Unit at EUA, it also looks in detail at a number of issues related to the development of MOOCs that are directly relevant for universities.
The full paper can be downloaded here.
Teachers
Staff at San Jose State University felt under pressure to use the edX JusticeX course of Harvard scholar Michael Sandel, which SJSU bought, and wrote an open letter to the author. Faculty protested against what they perceived as a push “to replace professors, dismantle departments, and provide a diminished education for students in public universities”. The letter, while acknowledging Michael Sandel’s scholarship, makes some remarkable points: for example, it refers to the fact that students would read less books, and also questions why the diverse student body of SJSU with its own relation to justice should listen to the discussions of predominantly white upper-class Harvard students. It also criticises, apart from economic considerations, that there was no pedagogical or academic reason to prioritise the course over the teaching provided by SJSU. (Note that the Governor of California had publicly declared MOOCs a means to save education costs.)
We do not know whether Michael Sandel responded to the letter, but he wrote to the author of the Chronicle of Higher Education article, clarifying that his course has been online for free for several years, and has only recently been redesigned for edX, and that he actually knew “very little about the arrangements that edX made with San Jose State University” (Chronicle of Higher Education, 02/05/2013). This sparked off a debate, and Sandel’s position has been echoed and supported by other professors, and apparently also by the American Council on Education (Chronicle of Higher Education, 25/05/2013). The point being made is that knowledge should be made available to a broad public, and MOOCs could be compared to other publications, such as books, in this regard.
This is obviously another aspect to be considered: scholars are aware that their books can be used for various purposes in various contexts, which is of course their key function and the reason for their success. But admittedly, the idea that the word would be separated from the scholar and would travel around the world raised considerable concern around 2 000 years ago. Is the critical question the “depersonalisation of teaching”? Does a MOOC teach – or just circulate knowledge? MOOC companies insist that it is teaching; people like Anant Agarwal of edX called upon teachers to rethink teaching and stated that it is time for them “to join the revolution” (Observer, 15/06/2013).
Interestingly, the changing role of teachers, which is central to other forms of e-learning, is addressed very differently in the MOOCs context: rather than redefining the teacher as facilitator and enabler of learning, MOOCs are suggesting a scenario in which a few are becoming star teachers and gain international fame and visibility – whereas others would end up in rather subaltern and uncreative positions in assisting the implementation of MOOCs. Many MOOCs are restating the traditional concept of a professor – albeit in a contemporary fashion: shorter lectures, more pictures, quizzes and riddles. The absence of women in teaching MOOCs has been noted.
But in the US context at least, there is a more mundane and material issue about MOOCs and teachers: Mitchell Duneier, a colleague of Sandel at Harvard and a “Star MOOC Professor” (Chronicle of Higher Education) declared that, despite the fact that teaching MOOCs has been “one of the greatest experiences of my career”, he would – at least for the moment – abstain from any further MOOC teaching. He turned down a proposal from Coursera to license his course to be used at other colleges in a mix of online and face-to-face instruction. “I’ve said no, because I think that it’s an excuse for state legislatures to cut funding to state universities. … And I guess that I’m really uncomfortable being part of a movement that’s going to get its revenue in that way. And I also have serious doubts about whether or not using a course like mine in that way would be pedagogically effective.” He expressed concern that licensed MOOCs would give a pretext to cut higher education budgets even more (Chronicle of Higher Education, 03/09/2013).
Obviously, it is not only university staff without tenure track positions and at less reputed colleges, who feel uncomfortable about MOOCs. At Amherst, one of the top US liberal arts colleges, faculty members decided against joining edX – the official reason was to safeguard the independence and uniqueness of the institution’s approach to learning and teaching.
While staff at some institutions may be suspected of being notoriously hostile to change, including the development of online learning, there are also institutions involved in online learning that are sceptical, but retain a waitand- see position. University leadership at the American University launched a moratorium on MOOCs, given that the implications are not entirely clear (Chronicle of Higher Education 13/05/2013). But, as reported, and this might be a crucial difference to the European situation, many universities are under pressure from their governing boards to get involved in MOOCs. Media articles in the US suggest that the President of the University of Virginia was ousted in part over issues related to online learning and later re-instated following a faculty rebellion against the external governing board.85 All this also suggests that institutions and their staff may decide against MOOCs for different and sometimes even opposite motives and reasons, and that the specific political and economic situation, institutional governance and contractual issues play a major role. Download the full paper here.