Vygotsky and MOOCs

Last week I was chatting with a colleague, Edwin, who was finishing an intense MOOC in Bioscience. Edwin is trained in IT and a veteran MOOC student who enrols in a variety of courses out of interest. We often have conversations surrounding students' use of ICT, including our own experiences. The conversations from last week became the inspiration for this post.

Over the 8-9 weeks Edwin was enrolled in Boiscience we discussed a number of questions about people's motivations to take MOOCs. Boiscience seemed like a university subject with journal articles to read, practical work to be completed, exams and formal reports to be written. 'Is this course part of a degree?' I asked. It seemed more full on than the MOOCs I had already taken.

Edwin is always an active participant. He trawls the discussion forums and tries to add to his classmates' experiences. When submitting a draft of an experimental report for feedback the tutor penalised him for not citing secondary sources properly. While perusing the discussion forum another classmate asked what citing in proper format entailed. Edwin reached out and tried to direct the sixty-something grandmother, Alice, to the citation guide provided. On the last day to submit, late at night Alice was still seeking help in this area. With a subject as intense as this, where was the tutor? Out of thousands of people taking the course, why didn't anyone else help out? What is the significance of Alice reaching out?

Vygotsky's Mind in Society (1978) begins with 3 questions the work attempts to analyse. In this post I'd like to unpack his 3rd question and apply my understanding of Vygotsky* to Alice's situation:

     What is the nature of the relationship between the use of tools and the development of speech?

Here, the use of tools refers to Alice's use of the MOOC platform. In this context speech is not verbal but written. I am concerned with the social interactions between Alice and Edwin and practical activity. Vygotsky says that the most significant moment in the course of intellectual development is when speech and practical activity converge (p. 24). Furthermore 'speech not only accompanies practical activity but also plays a specific role in carrying it out' (p. 25). In this sense, speech is agentive in that it enables the participant to act and to do so with varying levels of autonomy.

In this first chapter, Vygotsky writes about children, but I'm not suggesting that Alice and Edwin's interaction is childlike. Perhaps a better word to describe Alice might be 'novice' - she is new to MOOCs and is learning how to be in them. Edwin is the 'expert.' Vygotsky describes speech/act patterns:

• initially speech, used to address an adult [expert], follows actions; and
• at a later stage the child [novice] uses speech to plan for action (p. 28)

Relating to the former, Alice has probably tried to understand what proper citations look like. She has accessed and read the tutor's report. Perhaps, she has looked at other discussion forums to see if there were any threads related to her issue. Yet, at this stage she seeks the help of an expert.

On the surface, the purpose of Edwin's conversation with Alice seems obvious, to help her find the structure for correct citations. But at a deeper level, Edwin was acting to scaffold Alice's future use of the MOOC platform, one in which real time social speech is absent. 'Last time, I had to .... so that I could ...' is the kind of egocentric speech that any instructor seeking to develop students' application skills would hope to inspire.

What does this mean for MOOCs and the students who use them? In my work, social constructivist in its approach, I'm constantly playing a tug of war asking myself which is more important: students learning the tech or students learning the subject? Not all tech is created equally and sometimes learning the tech will provide students with the skills to assert their own agency to learn the subject material.

In our last conversation, Edwin shared Alice's final plea. Ten minutes before the assignment was due, 11:50pm, Alice confessed that she still hadn't found how to correctly cite her sources and may as well just hand in her assignment. If we didn't know anything about Alice, it would be easy to chide her for not finding the citation guide on the platform or 'just Googling it.' What's sad about this case is that for someone trying to be a part of a wider community of learners that community failed to address to her needs: communication in the form of non-verbal speech to direct her to successfully cite her sources and scaffold her for future successful learning experiences.

It would also be easy to label Alice as an older person who just doesn't get the technology, but research shows that younger people who've grown up in the digital age also need to be scaffolded to use technology in formal educational environments. When I was in Boston I learned about a school that gave extra credit to students who successfully completed MOOCs. I wonder how these students have faired in these communities.

With the pressure of MOOC platforms to produce profit, one has to wonder that if some students are isolated in introductory courses, how to they expect enrolments in fee paying students to rise?


*It should be noted that I'm a novice Vygotskian 'scholar' and any feedback would be much appreciated if you happen upon this post.