ABSTRACT

This article reports the lack of epistemic diversity in producers of massive open online courses (MOOCs) through examining whose knowledges and what knowledges are forefronted in MOOCs. Through analysis of 27 semi-structured interviews, the study explored the relationship between South African MOOC designers and their open educational practices (OEP), questioning in what ways MOOC designers enact openness in their design, based on their own reasoning of what openness means. The study illustrates that MOOC designers create MOOCs that strongly link to who they are, what they value, and how they understand the world, highlighting the crucial need to have epistemically diverse MOOC designers from different cultures, value systems, and epistemologies, that critically reflect on their positionalities and subjectivities. From this, the study asserts a new way of looking at OEP where MOOC designers go beyond implementing OEP, to being someone who is open. I termed this the embodiment of openness.

摘要

本文通过检查大型开放在线课程（MOOC）的知识和知识在MOOC中最前沿的内容，报告了缺乏认知多样性的问题。通过对27个半结构化访谈的分析，该研究探索了南非MOOC设计师与他们的开放式教育实践（OEP）之间的关系，并根据他们对开放性含义的自己的看法，质疑MOOC设计师以何种方式在设计中实行开放性。该研究表明，MOOC设计师创建的MOOC与自己，他们所重视的事物以及他们对世界的了解紧密相关，这凸显了使具有不同文化，价值体系和认识论的认识上各异的MOOC设计师至关重要的需求，这些想法可以体现关于他们的位置和主观性。由此，该研究提出了一种看待OEP的新方法，MOOC设计人员不仅可以实施OEP，还可以成为开放的人。我称这个为开放的体现。