MOOCs and the Ethnography of Media Socialization

大规模在线开放课程（Massive Open Online Courses，简称MOOCs）的出现对高等教育的文化、社会和制度产生了怎样的影响？为了解决这个问题，麻省理工学院的研究人员格雷厄姆·琼斯和苏珊·西尔贝采用参与式观察、访谈和话语分析来研究edX的设计、实施和接受情况。edX是世界上开发这种新型教育技术的主要场所之一。该奖项将支持三个领域的研究。首先，edX教育平台的设计过程，特别是这个平台从工程学延伸到社会科学和人文科学。研究人员将重点关注设计师在平台中构建的学习理论、隐性假设和价值偏好。第二，在edX论坛中，学生之间的计算机媒介交流（CMC），通过这种交流，学生参与协作式的教与学。研究人员将跟踪学生表达的和隐含的目标、承诺和对课程作业的批判性参与，寻找参与和评估的各种模式。第三，围绕mooc的各种在线和纸媒相互竞争的解读纷繁复杂，这反映了这项技术正在发展的更广泛的文化背景。在这里，研究人员将把这种新的教育技术在文化上流传的说法与学生展示的、研究人员观察到的体验并置于一起。Jones和Silbey将这项研究视为推进社会学习理论的一种方式，他们不仅将mooc视为一种新型的正规教育，而且更重要的是，将其视为一种社会化的实践，在这种实践中，知识传播与人们建立身份和社区的互动联系在一起。从这个角度来看，作为社会化的场所，mooc可能不仅对学生，而且对工程师和教育者，体验和塑造教育社区的形式，以及学习的内容以及重视和发展什么样的人的方式产生深远的影响。研究人员最终试图阐述媒体社会化的理论框架，强调通过媒体学习和学习使用媒体的实践如何影响人们如何看待自己和与他人的关系。在学术界内外的许多人都在质疑美国历史上独特的住宅、文科和理科高等教育模式的价值之际，琼斯和西尔贝将提出并公开传播一种基于经验的理解，即mooc对个人、大学、国家和世界的影响。研究人员特别渴望帮助社会科学家同行更好地理解mooc对他们自己领域的影响，并培训本科生和研究生在虚拟世界中进行正式和非正式社交的人种学研究。

How is the much-heralded advent of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) impacting higher education culturally, socially, and institutionally? To address this question, investigators Graham Jones and Susan Silbey of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology employ participant observation, interviewing and discourse analysis to study of the design, implementation, and reception of edX, one of the world's principal sites for the development of this new educational technology. This award will support research in three areas. First, the process of designing of edX's educational platform, particularly as this platform extends beyond engineering, to social sciences and the humanities. Researchers will focus on the learning theories, tacit assumptions and value preferences the designers build into the platform. Second, the computer-mediated communication (CMC) among the students within edX forums, through which students engage in collaborative teaching and learning. Researchers will track students' expressed and implicit goals, commitments, and critical engagement with the course work, looking for varied patterns of involvement and evaluation. Third, the welter of competing interpretations online and in print surrounding MOOCs, which reflects the broader cultural context in which this technology is evolving. Here, researchers will juxtapose the culturally circulating accounts of this new educational technology with the experiences of it as displayed by students and observed by the researchers.Viewing this research as a way to advance theories of social learning, Jones and Silbey approach MOOCs not only as a new type of formal education but also, and more importantly, as a practice of socialization in which knowledge transmission is connected to interactions through which persons forge both identities and community. From this perspective, as sites of socialization, MOOCs may have profound consequences for the way not just students, but also engineers and educators, experience and shape not only the form of educational communities but also the content of what is learned and what kind of persons are valued and developed. The researchers ultimately seek to elaborate a theoretical framework of media socialization, emphasizing how practices of learning through media and learning to use media affect how people view themselves and relate to others.At a moment when many people inside and outside the academy are questioning the value of the historically unique American residential, liberal arts and sciences model of higher education, Jones and Silbey will produce and publicly disseminate an empirically grounded understanding of the implications of MOOCs for individuals, universities, the nation, and the world. The investigators are particularly eager to help fellow social scientists better understand the implications of MOOCs for their own fields, and to train undergraduate and graduate students in ethnographic research on formal and informal socialization in virtual worlds.