{"id":13301,"date":"2013-02-20t08:00:33","date_gmt":"2013-02-20t13:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/?p=13301"},"modified":"2013-02-19t15:52:32","modified_gmt":"2013-02-19t20:52:32","slug":"getting-to-know-coursera-who-is-everyone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/2013\/02\/getting-to-know-coursera-who-is-everyone\/","title":{"rendered":"getting to know coursera: who is everyone?"},"content":{"rendered":"

by katie mcewen, graduate assistant<\/em><\/p>\n

in our blog posts up to now, we\u2019ve taken a descriptive approach to look at what coursera does and how they do it.\u00a0 today, we\u2019re going to turn our attention to a different aspect of the coursera platform that, i would argue, is no less important: the question of access and exclusion.<\/p>\n

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photo credit:\u00a0patrick hoesly<\/a> via\u00a0compfight<\/a> cc<\/a><\/p>\n

let\u2019s start at the beginning.\u00a0 couresera claims \u201cto empower people with education<\/a>.”\u00a0 \u00a0indeed, their mission<\/a> explicitly links access, education, and social change:<\/p>\n

we hope to give everyone access to the world-class education that has so far been available only to a select few. we want to empower people with education that will improve their lives, the lives of their families, and the communities they live in.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and this certainly was the message repeated by daphne koller<\/a> in her october talk at vanderbilt, \u201cthe online revolution: education for everyone<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 now, as the title might already indicate, koller\u2019s talk didn\u2019t exactly aim at rhetorical subtlety.\u00a0 i say this not to denigrate the importance of access, education, and social change, but rather to unpack how koller, and coursera, deftly appropriate these terms to the project of a for-profit online start-up.<\/p>\n

\u201chistory won\u2019t get you a job,\u201d koller said in her talk, as if this were a self-evident truth.\u00a0 clearly an aside\u2014a kind of throw-away moment for a laugh in an auditorium filled with computer scientists and engineers\u2014her statement nonetheless rankled with me.<\/p>\n

as someone who studies german\u2014perhaps arguably less useful than history\u2014i\u2019m hardly unfamiliar with the struggle to find a job.\u00a0 after all, at around 40 years old the academic job crisis in the humanities<\/a> is older than i am.\u00a0 but i also recognize the privilege inherent in pursuing a field that provides little straightforward career trajectory or job security.\u00a0 it is the lot i have been able to choose.<\/p>\n

yet, i would argue that koller\u2019s comment nonetheless belies a certain myopic perspective, a certain pedagogical parochialism, which should give us pause from the co-founder of a company whose mission claims \u201cto empower people with education.\u201d\u00a0 and not only because coursera continues to expand their offerings in the social sciences and the humanities.\u00a0 but also because what i take her statement to mean is that history won\u2019t get you a job in computer science.<\/p>\n

well, no.\u00a0 but history might very well get you a job as a history teacher, a curator, archivist, journalist, or librarian; as a lawyer, or at an ngo; even politicians\u2014woodrow wilson springs to mind\u2014have occasionally found history to be a worthwhile discipline.<\/p>\n

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\nphoto credit: timm suess<\/a> via compfight<\/a> cc<\/a><\/p>\n

and here we\u2019re getting at a bothersome tension.\u00a0 in her talk, koller boldly claimed the \u201conline revolution\u201d for coursera, in the name of the people\u2014\u201cthe online revolution: education for everyone,\u201d let us remember\u2014without first carefully defining her terms.\u00a0 who is included in everyone?\u00a0 and what is education?\u00a0 is it revolution and empowerment?\u00a0 or is it job training?<\/strong><\/p>\n

for many people these are one in the same.\u00a0 education and job skills, especially among disenfranchised populations, are powerful agents for personal and social change<\/a>.\u00a0 but are those most desperately in need of education, those systematically, structurally excluded and marginalized\u2014that is, those for whom education would be truly revolutionary\u2014really coursera\u2019s main audience?<\/p>\n

initial demographic data would appear to suggest not.\u00a0 the sample is small, reflecting demographic data from two courses: andrew ng\u2019s \u201cmachine learning\u201d<\/a> (reported in june 2012) and tucker balch\u2019s \u201ccomputational investing, part i\u201d<\/a> (reported in january 2013).\u00a0 and while it may be assumed that these courses would draw a more highly educated crowd, the data is disheartening.<\/p>\n

\u201camong 14,045 students in the machine learning course who responded to a demographic survey,\u201d inside higher ed<\/a><\/em> reports,<\/p>\n

half were professionals who currently held jobs in the tech industry. the largest chunk, 41 percent, said they were professionals currently working in the software industry; another 9 percent said they were professionals working in non-software areas of the computing and information technology industries.<\/p>\n

many were enrolled in some kind of traditional postsecondary education. nearly 20 percent were graduate students, and another 11.6 percent were undergraduates. the remaining registrants were either unemployed (3.5 percent), employed somewhere other than the tech industry (2.5 percent), enrolled in a k-12 school (1 percent), or \u201cother\u201d (11.5 percent).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and \u201ccomputational investing, part i\u201d reports a similarly well-educated constituent: of those students who completed the course<\/a> (2,535 participants or 4.8% of the 53,205 enrolled), 34% live in the us; 27% live in non-oecd countries; average age was 35; 70% are white; 92% are male; 279 hold phds.<\/p>\n

so who is coursera really reaching?<\/p>\n

let\u2019s consider this most basic question of access, the one coursera claims to address.\u00a0 when we look closely, access to coursera is not really free, or open to all.\u00a0 it depends upon a system of privilege differently calibrated, though no less decisive, than that limiting access to higher education<\/a>.<\/p>\n

coursera courses require access not only to a computer and a reliable, fast internet connection, but also presupposes less tangible facilities like advanced literacy, proficiency in english, familiarity with western academic standards (including standards of discourse), to say nothing of study, composition, and communication skills.\u00a0 above all, courses, whether online or in person, require the luxury of time, space, and quiet to devote to study.\u00a0 (not for nothing did virginia woolf advocate \u201ca room of one\u2019s own<\/a>.\u201d)<\/p>\n

looked at in this way, the bar for access is really quite high.\u00a0 and in light of recent estimates that more than one third of the world population survives on something like $2 a day<\/a>, koller\u2019s suggestion of monetization through certification\u2014the current model for fee-based course options<\/a> quotes fees between $30 and $100\u2014will only further exclude those with neither access nor means nor power.<\/p>\n

and given this reality, it felt oddly out of place for koller to open her talk with an emotional and specious historical argument about the legacy of apartheid in south africa.\u00a0 the story<\/a> of a woman trampled to death while attempting to enroll her son at the university of johannesburg powerfully demonstrates the dire need for educational access across the world.\u00a0 but koller failed to situate this anecdote within the complex, and uncomfortable, history of apartheid or even within the myriad structural impediments to change that continue to inform (if not outright perpetuate) asymmetrical systems of access and privilege.\u00a0 even, or perhaps especially, online.\u00a0 and not just in south africa, but everywhere.<\/p>\n

as wendy chun reminded us in her talk \u201cthe dark side of the digital humanities<\/a>,\u201d\u00a0presented at the 2013 mla convention:<\/p>\n

i also want to stress that my sympathetic critique is not aimed at the humanities, but at the general euphoria surrounding technology and education.<\/strong> that is, it takes aim at the larger project of rewriting political and pedagogical problems into technological ones, into problems that technology can fix. this rewriting ranges from the idea that moocs, rather than a serious public commitment to education, can solve the problem of the spiraling cost of education (moocs that enroll, but don\u2019t graduate; moocs that miss the point of what we do, for when lectures work, they work because they create communities, because they are, to use benedict anderson\u2019s phrase, \u201cextraordinary mass ceremonies\u201d) to the blind embrace of technical skills.<\/p>\n

[emphasis in original]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

so perhaps it is time for us to begin a conversation about these issues\u2014political and pedagogical\u2014and how education online might more meaningfully intervene to foster real, radical change.\u00a0 of course, there is no single answer.\u00a0 and coursera, or moocs in general, cannot be expected to fix the daunting problems faced by higher education as a whole.<\/p>\n

but what if koller and her colleagues use the visibility of their platform to forge links with those communities typically excluded, even in coursera?\u00a0 what if they modified their monetization strategies to facilitate, not impede, community outreach? \u00a0could they bring coursera to community centers, struggling public high schools, big brother and big sister programs, prisons, or treatment facilities?<\/p>\n

after all, if coursera truly wants to revolutionize education for everyone, they will have to develop a more inclusive definition of \u201ceveryone\u201d to include those who are often invisible in higher education.<\/p>\n

in our next post, we\u2019ll continue the conversation about access and privilege with a look at race and gender in coursera.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by katie mcewen, graduate assistant in our blog posts up to now, we\u2019ve taken a descriptive approach to look at what coursera does and how they do it.\u00a0 today, we\u2019re going to turn our attention to a different aspect of the coursera platform that, i would argue, is no less important: the question of access…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":452,"featured_media":13305,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[167],"tags":[191],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/cdn.vanderbilt.edu\/vu-wp0\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/59\/2018\/07\/09154452\/4354835921_151acb9b551.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13301"}],"collection":[{"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/452"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}