MOOCs are a hot topic in education and it might be argued that they represent the ultimate democratization of education, as they offer world class education to anyone with internet access. Therefore the question is: What do MOOCs mean for democratizing education?

Free online education has been around for a while and is welcomed as long as its quality is good. I could not see why MOOCs cannot be equally good if not better. Currently reported completion rates might be very low, but at least opportunity to learn is available to everyone. MOOC supporters claim these courses can democratize education by providing free education to all. For me this might be too optimistic an opinion!

Democratizing education is much more complex than just digitizing and making some materials freely accessible online. In fact there are a lot of barriers that needed to be considered, such as the methods of delivering these courses, internet connection and the culture context of learning.

The culture norms and values play an important role in the learning context for many people. Not to mention the variety of language spoken around the globe. These attributes contribute in forming educational systems in any country. Consequently each country has it is own educational system and culture norms that might be totally different to the others. Thus, I will highlight some difficulties in developing a system that works for all.

Internet connection

MOOCs providers’ aim of making sure everyone in the world has access to great education is a very challenging task. There are three main barriers to this goal. The first barrier is that the access to these courses is entirely dependent on the internet availability as the majority of developing countries either suffer from poor connectivity or they do not have it all.

The language of the course and localisation

The second barrier is that the language of the offered course can be considered as a barrier since most of the courses are in English. This challenge has been successfully overcome by some MOOC providers through localization of the materials and partnerships with international universities that started offering same courses in their own languages. See our blog post on MOOCs and Localization. However we should bear in mind that customizing and delivering MOOCs to specific nations is more than just translating the content.

Culture norms and values should be considered as well.

The cost of the materials: Books

The fourth barrier is that some offered courses require textbooks. These textbooks are usually expensive and not affordable by most learners. Hence it ruins the point of providing free accessible education as some of the courses’ complementary materials are not available.

Coursera chose its next logical step toward democratizing education. It has announced deals with some publishers to offer free textbooks for MOOCs with conditions. This step will allow those who enrolled with Coursera to get access to college textbooks from publishers like Oxford University, Macmillan Higher Education, SAGE and Wiley. This access will be so restricted as the learners will only be able to read the books through e-readers from the student-services company Chegg. Learners would not be able to download or print the free textbooks available through this deal, and they would lose the access to these books once the MOOC finished.

This step definitely will add significant benefits to learners for whom a traditional higher education might be economically unachievable and for those who do not have the income to purchase textbooks.

Despite these above mentioned barriers, MOOCs still attract many international learners. According to the statistics on coursera blog, learners across the globe represent a high percentage of MOOC takers.

The discussion on benefits and problems is still ongoing amongst supporters and critics of MOOCs’ about their role in democratizing education so it is a little early and difficult to predict exactly how MOOCs will affect the landscape of traditional education and especially higher education. Undoubtedly the educational sector has been affected already through prestigious universities such as Harvard, MIT and Stanford making some of their courses freely accessible via MOOC platforms. Joining these courses only requires an internet connection. Therefore, how could this change the international education? Will some free-internet solutions such as Google wireless balloons(Loon) overcome the problem of internet connectivity in developing countries?