MOOCs and the Ethnography of Media Socialization

MOOC（大规模开放式在线课程）的出现如何在文化，社会和制度上影响高等教育？为了解决这个问题，马萨诸塞州理工学院的研究人员格雷厄姆·琼斯和苏珊·西尔贝采用参与观察、访谈和话语分析的方法来研究edX的设计、实施和接受。edX是世界上开发这种新教育技术的主要网站之一。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延伸到社会科学和人文科学。研究人员将专注于学习理论，隐性假设和设计师构建到平台中的价值偏好。第二，edX论坛内学生之间的计算机中介交流（CMC），学生通过该交流进行协作教学。研究人员将跟踪学生的表达和隐含的目标，承诺，并与课程工作的关键参与，寻找不同的参与和评估模式。第三，围绕MOOC的在线和印刷品的相互竞争的解释，这反映了这项技术正在发展的更广泛的文化背景。在这里，研究人员将这种新的教育技术的文化传播帐户与学生展示和研究人员观察到的经验并列。将这项研究视为推进社会学习理论的一种方式，Jones和Silbey不仅将MOOC视为一种新型的正规教育，而且更重要的是，作为一种社会化实践，知识的传播与人们形成身份和社区的互动联系在一起。从这个角度来看，作为社会化的网站，MOOC可能不仅对学生，而且对工程师和教育工作者，不仅对教育社区的形式，而且对所学到的内容以及什么样的人受到重视和发展的方式产生深远的影响。研究人员最终试图阐述一个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。当学院内外的许多人质疑历史上独特的美国寄宿，文科和理科高等教育模式的价值时，琼斯和西尔贝将产生并公开传播MOOC对个人，大学，国家和世界的影响的经验基础的理解。研究人员特别渴望帮助其他社会科学家更好地理解MOOC对他们自己领域的影响，并培训本科生和研究生进行关于虚拟世界中正式和非正式社交的民族志研究。

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.