ERIC Number: EJ1043100
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2014-Aug
Pages: 29
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: EISSN-1740-2743
EISSN: N/A
Taylorizing Academia, Deskilling Professors and Automating Higher Education: The Recent Role of Moocs
Mirrlees, Tanner; Alvi, Shahid
Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, v12 n2 p45-73 Aug 2014
Since 2012, corporations, politicians, journalists and educators have asserted that MOOCs--massive open online courses--are radically changing North American and global education, and for the better. This article offers a counterpoint to the techno-deterministic and optimistic buzz surrounding for-profit MOOCs by contextualizing and analyzing MOOCs with respect to the forces and relations of capitalism, Taylorist managerial strategies, longstanding attempts by U.S. university managers to apply new communication technology to the educational labor process as a way of making it more "efficient" and the often fraught power relations between university managers and teachers. We contend that MOOCs represent the latest attempt in a long history of Taylorist managerial efforts to make education more "efficient" by getting fewer and fewer professors to teach more and more students with less resources and at a lower cost. Our conclusion calls for the "democratization" of the MOOC.
Descriptors: Online Courses, Large Group Instruction, Class Size, Higher Education, Productivity, Educational Change, Neoliberalism, Educational Technology, Social Systems, Marxian Analysis, Social Class, Power Structure, Influence of Technology, Social Influences
Institute for Education Policy Studies. University of Northampton, School of Education, Boughton Green Road, Northampton, NN2 7AL, UK. Tel: +44-1273-270943; e-mail: ieps@ieps.org.uk; Web site: http://www.jceps.com
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A