Do not be taken in by buzzwords

Professor Tan Sri Dato' Dzulkifli Abdul Razak
Learning Curve: Perspective
New Sunday Times - 2-3-2014

THE buzzwords in the education sector now are Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs).

These are online courses provided free-of-charge by some universities so that those with the facilities can access them from any part of the world. MOOCs have been promoted as the "tide" that will lift all boats as it were.

Naturally many are excited about this possibility especially where MOOCs are regarded as a supplement to the current system that is riddled with poor teaching standards and lack of resources.

MOOCs is also a means to access so-called "world-class" learning materials. Therefore, there is a rush to set up MOOCs as a new must-have of the education ecosystem.

One needs to cast back to some three decades ago when the buzzword was CAL (Computer-Aided Learning) or CAI (Computer-Aided Instructions). Like MOOCs, CAL was a must-have of the day with all the justifications that the computer was the panacea for all learning skills.

For students, it was a means to pace themselves, with the more intelligent ones moving ahead with the help of the computer, while slower ones had the luxury of taking their time in mastering a course. Teachers were freed from the chore of having to balance between the two groups, invariably losing them along the way due to boredom in the case of smarter students, and sheer lack of understanding for the other extreme.

Learning was supposed to be customised according to the students' needs.

CAL is no longer regarded as a dominant part of the learning ecosystem. Not only has it evolved as the information technology sector evolved, but in most cases it also did not even get picked up!

The reason was not due to the hardware and the technology itself as many were eager to supply them (and some made good profit).

Problems came in the form of content for the CAL and the attitude towards learning aided by technology that requires not just a high level of motivation and know-how but also a level of discipline so high that supervision is not a necessity.

The issue of content alone was enough to be a barrier to CAL because without content, no amount of technology can make it a success. Imagine if we were to provide content to all the subjects or courses that were taught in a university.

Picture a scenario if this content is in languages other than English to cater to a particular medium of instruction.

In other words, someone had to be trained to work on the content because CAL was such a new tool then that most were not familiar with it.

Then there was training for those interested to develop CAL content, but there were never enough sessions. It became compulsory in many institutions for academic staff to design CAL content and be rewarded with a promotion, for example.

CAL caught on for a while but it was not sustainable. Consequently, it died a predictable death -- an expensive one by all counts.

When talking about MOOCs, one can feel almost similar points being articulated. MOOCs are easy to set up like all technology-based infrastructure, given the right incentives and margin.

What is often left unsaid -- if not due to oblivion -- is the soft side of things once again: content development, training, attitude and of course sustainability.

Unless these are addressed first and foremost, chances are MOOCs will end up just like CAL. No doubt a few may gain from MOOCs but most may not until the soft issues are resolved. Questions such as "Who controls knowledge?" or "Are MOOCs a tool for neoliberalism?" arise.

These queries were raised by no less than Philip G. Altbach, a well-known research professor and director of the Centre for International Higher Education at Boston College in the United States.

Altbach argued that MOOCs can be a barrier to "alternative voices to be heard", especially in a non-English speaking cultural environment.

It is more so in developing countries where the nature of knowledge and philosophy of pedagogy being promoted are of little interest to policy makers who just want to be associated with buzzwords regardless of the long-term "madly out of order consequences" (MOoOCs)!

Let us learn from the CAL experience this time around.