I have begun to participate in my first MOOC (massive online open course) in earnest, after several other failed attempts at other MOOCs. My motives are legion: I am able to study the actor networks at work in MOOCs as the content of the course, and I will do so as part of the data gathering process for my upcoming presentation at the Conference on College Composition and Communication (March 20th, 2014). I'm hoping I've picked an angle that will work in multiple ways. We'll see.
My first assignment is to read an article within a news stream that deals with science and the humanities in some way, and to begin to identify and inventory the agents involved in defining the issues that appear as newsworthy. My first article is from The Chronicle of Higher Ed's February 13th, 2014 issue, and article by John Warner entitled "There is No Demand for Higher Education."
The inventory is as follows:
Places and events:
Organizations:
Stakeholders with different interests:
Individual:
Views of the world (network of controlling values):
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Observations
Latour's MOOC instructs me to answer these three questions:
- What have you learned about the making of science through this example?
- In what way does it exemplify or clarify or allow you to dispute what has been said in the class?
- What other pieces of news, other examples, and other blogs by your fellow students does it relate to? Etc.
I'm not quite sure if the sample I have chosen (as the most recent news item concerning MOOCs that came up from a Google search) deals with science in the way Latour means. It deals with the intersection of technology (MOOCs) in traditional educational spaces where certain people, the author in this case, feel they do not belong. If the technology of MOOC design and deliver may be seen as a "science," wherein there are experts who practice these methods to produce certain results, then the author of the article may indeed occur as a representative of the humanities, whose identity was forged within traditional educational frameworks that are threatened in some way by those agents advocating for the "science" of MOOCs.
What I see as a more important observation is that I have actually transitioned into a new role as an active learner within the network of this particular MOOC, engaging in the risk of failure, and actually having a bit of fun in the process.