Anthropology in and of MOOCs
Name
Buyandelger_Anthropology in and of.pdf
Size
102.72 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
839f41bde63979281f2109ceb0bc3e55
Author(s)
Flamenbaum, Rachel
Buyandelger, Manduhai
Downey, Greg
Starn, Orin
Laserna, Catalina
Kelkar, Shreeharsh
Rouse, Carolyn
Looser, Tom
Jones, Graham M.
Date Issued
September 2014
Journal
American Anthropologist
Publisher
Wiley Blackwell
Citation
Flamenbaum, Rachel, Manduhai Buyandelger, Greg Downey, Orin Starn, Catalina Laserna, Shreeharsh Kelkar, Carolyn Rouse, and Tom Looser. “Anthropology in and of MOOCs.” Edited by Graham M. Jones. American Anthropologist 116, no. 4 (September 22, 2014): 829–838. © 2014 by the American Anthropological Association
Version
Final published version
Abstract
The suddenness with which Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, sprang upon us left many within the academy grasping for interpretations. Early proponents touted them as revolutionary tools that could enhance on-campus learning while also making high-quality education accessible to a vast global population, reforming a malfunctioning university system, and producing new kinds of data on how people learn. Critics countered that behind this latest techno-utopian fad lurked an all-too-familiar conservative agenda to downsize the university; the global ambitions of a few elite, resource-rich schools; Silicon Valley corporate interests; and the disciplinary priorities of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (the STEM fields). With some critical distance, the eight scholars in this Vital Topics Forum draw upon their experiences as anthropologists involved in MOOCs and anthropologists doing studies of MOOCs to propel us beyond such facile responses. Doing what anthropologists do best, they employ contextually rich analysis to upend received wisdom about what MOOCs mean, provide processual accounts of how they are made, and offer first-hand observations of how students are using them on the ground.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Anthropology Program
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Program in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Program in Science, Technology and Society
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.12143
