MOOCs and Global Education

Approximately 80% of the world’s population is unable to access educational content published in English (Beaven, Comas-Quinn, de los Arcos, & Hauck, 2013). Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have the potential to provide educational opportunities across geographic, linguistic and cultural boundaries that would otherwise be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. The core content of a MOOC is really no different than the core content of any online course; it is designed and taught in one language, typically by designers from one culture. It is the massiveness and openness that changes an online course into a system in which information is re-transmitted, shared, and adapted to participant needs. Solitary participants from remote areas have the opportunity to interact with other experts and learners in specialized areas through the MOOC environment. The result is a growing democratization of access to information and a diminishing language barrier.

One of the adaptations needed when participation in a MOOC grows and crosses international lines is the need for translation into other languages. Simon Thrun and Peter Norvig of Stanford taught one of the earliest MOOCs, Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (Rodriguez, 2012). It was offered free to anyone in the world, and attracted 160,000 enrollees. Of those, 20,000 from 190 different countries completed the course. With the help of more than 2,000 volunteers, the course was translated into 44 different languages (Murray, 2012). In an unplanned, grassroots movement, many participants connected on social media as well, in languages other than English, making the MOOC both more accessible and more relevant to their needs (Murray, 2012).

Coursera (https://www.coursera.org/) provides an ongoing example of an approach to overcoming geographinc, linguistic, and cultural boundaries. Coursera is a non-profit organization started out of

https://www.coursera.org/

Stanford University in 2012 that partners with universities around the world in order to provide free, high-quality MOOCs that are open to anyone in the world. That mission requires dealing with the issue of language. The mission of the Coursera project is “to connect the world to a great education. To do so, we have to overcome language barriers, which can be very real obstacles for our students who come from all over the world.” (https://www.coursera.org/about/programs, 2013). After one year of providing courses in English, Coursera formed the Global Translations Partners Program in order to begin the process of translating courses into Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Kazakh, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish, and Ukrainian, with more languages to follow. Reaching 5.2 million users after only 18 months of existence, this project is worth noting because of its scale and because it is taking a lead role in modeling global access to the highest quality learning.

MOOCs and translation projects like the ones cited here have shown the potential to build language bridges across spans that would otherwise have seemed impassable. The nature of MOOCs leads to collaborative solving of the inherent language issues of the Internet.


 References

Beaven, T., Comas-Quinn, A., Arcos, B. de los, & Hauck, M. (2013). The Open Translation MOOC: creating online communities to transcend linguistic barriers. In OER 13 Creating a virtuous circle (pp. 26–27). Nottingham. Retrieved from http://oro.open.ac.uk.libproxy.boisestate.edu/37583/1/980574D7.pdf

Haynie, D. (June 25, 2013). 5 Reasons International Students Should Consider MOOCs. US News and World Reports. Retrieved from http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/articles/2013/06/25/5-reasons-international-students-should-consider-moocs

Murray, P. (2012). Sebastian Thrun aims to revolutionize university education with Udacity. Retrieved from http://singularityhub.com/2012/01/28/sebastian-thrun-aims-to-revolutionize-university-education-with-udacity/.

Omollo, K. L. (2013). New language captions for health videos: Translation update. Blog post March 22, 2013. Retrieved from https://open.umich.edu/blog/2013/03/22/new-language-captions-for-health-videos-translation-update/.

Rodriguez, O. (2012). MOOCs and the AI-Stanford like Courses: two successful and distinct course formats for massive open online courses. European Journal of Open, Distance, and E-Learning, 1–13. Retrieved from http://www.eurodl.org/materials/contrib/2012/Rodriguez.htm

Learning Object Repositories In E‐Learning: Challenges For Learners In Saudi Arabia

AlMegren and Yassin (2013) studied the specific challenges faced by learners in Saudi Arabia when they try to use online learning objects. the concept of this study drew my attention because I am currently working on a large-scale learning objects repository project for the Riverside County Office of Education. I was curious to see how the local culture of Saudi Arabia might lead to differences in how learning object repositories are interacted with there as compared to the interactions in the United States.

Learning objects are reusable digital resources. Common learning object tool categories include: video sharing, podcasting, presentation sharing, blogging, bookmark sharing, online documents, wikis, real time communication, and social networking. These digital learning resources can be organized into Learning Object Repositories (LORs) in a way to be accessible by learners and in a way to support delivery of content. The dual purposes of the study were to provide qualitative evidence of how students in Saudi Arabia used LORs and to minimize the challenges of LOR use in Saudi Arabia through the discussion of those challenges. The authors employed a qualitative methodological approach. The primary methodology was studying the published reports from the Ministry of Higher Education, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (MOHE, 2009) and the National Center for e-Learning and Distance Learning, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (NCeL, 2009).

This study is important for many reasons. Internet use among Saudi citizens has been experiencing rapid growth. In the eight years between 2000 and 2008, the number of Saudi Internet users grew by 7.7 million (AlMegren and Yassin, 2013). During this same period, the Saudi government was increasing spending on education and on e-learning. These factors, among others, contributed to a need to study how Saudis were interacting with LORs in order to optimize those interactions.

AlMegren and Yassin (2013) identified the following obstacles specific to LOR use by Saudi learners: government censorship, government controlled Internet access, strong influence of conservative religious beliefs, language, gender gap, complexities of policy-making between government and non-government organizations, and the large expenses of associated with modernizing technology in a country that was recently behind much of the rest of the world.

Language and communication is also a large barrier to the use of LORs. The Saudi national language, Arabic, poses a challenge in itself. Though there are 300 million speakers of Arabic across 22 countries, the language is not well represented in the digital learning resources found in LORs around the globe. So Saudi students faces a challenge not associated with English speakers.

Unlike the United States, Saudi Arabia has an official religion. Islam promotes high moral standards and strict observances. Those religious ideals, combined with a powerful central government, frequently lead to a level of censorship which can have a negative influence on student access to learning objects. The traditionally conservative religious views also lead to a gender gap in which women have far less access to LORs than do the men in Saudi Arabia.

The authors had three recommendation for overcoming some of the challenges Saudi learners face in using LORs. First, produce a comprehensive national framework and plan for the advancement of LOR use. Second, create a national LOR portal in Saudi Arabia. This would help address the functional, technological, and language needs of Saudi learners. And third, establish a e-university in the country.

Never having lived in a country that is repressive in so many ways (though it is nice to read about the many strides they have been making in the last couple of decades), it is difficult to relate to some of the challenges that learners in Saudi Arabia face. I did connect with the first recommendation of establishing a far-reaching plan. On a more local level, I was involved in the production of the California eLearning Framework over the last couple of years as a member of the working committee.

Though we did not need to deal with religion, language, or gender, the purpose and the process were similar. We needed to bring together a stakeholder group of experts, leaders, and community members to help set the course for the plan. We quickly identified the challenges of infrastructure, content, and teaching practice. Without this plan, California would be even further behind other state in its adoption of elearning. This study does make me reflect on the need to look more deeply into the challenges that learners in California might still be facing when it comes to the use of LORs. The group I worked with on the eLearning Framework was very concerned about institutional challenges. But we did not spend time on the topic of challenges that the learners may be facing.

References

AlMegren, A., & Yassin, S. (2013). Learning object repositories in e‐learning: Challenges for learners in Saudi Arabia. European Journal of Open, Distance and eLearning. Retrieved at http://www.eurodl.org/?p=archives&year=2013&halfyear=1&article=570

Ministry of Higher Education, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (MOHE) (2011). Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Ministry of Higher Education e-learning and distance education. [Online]. Booklet for the International Exhibition and Conference for Higher Education. Retrieved at: http://www.mohe.gov.sa/ar/default.aspx  (translated).

National Center for e-Learning and Distance Learning (NCeL) (2009b). Document on: Requirement identification for the new educational network infrastructure in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. [Unpublished raw data, NCeL internal research presentation]. NCeL: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.