Ubiquitous learning and massive communication in MOOCs: Revisiting the role of teaching as a praxis

ABSTRACT

In the present study, we refer to Carr's theory on the nature of educational practice for evaluating teaching as a praxis in relation to two major changes, i.e. ubiquitous learning and massive communication caused by MOOCs. With regard to the first change, we argue that the teacher is faced with the problem of encouraging the learners to get involved in the educational activities. The second change has resulted in a reduction of teacher’s agency and loss of teaching legitimacy and hence its natural feature as a morally committed action. In addition, massive communication has affected the potential encounters between teacher and student considered as the ‘Other’ and has replaced conversation with texting. We highlight the significance of teacher-student conversation as an essential element for developing reflection and self-reflection capacities. Finally, we discuss that the responsibility of teaching is beyond designing and implementing education technically through MOOCs.

KEYWORDS:

• Ubiquitous learning
• massive communication
• praxis
• teaching

Acknowledgments

The core idea of the study was shaped and expanded during the sabbatical leave of the corresponding author at TU Delft in the Netherlands. Some naive and initial ideas of the study were presented at the INPE conference in Warsaw, 2016 (Zarghami-Hamrah and de Vries, 2016) and at the 8th Philosophy of Education Society of Iran conference in Ahvaz, 2017 (The presentation was in Persian and about lifelong learning (Zarghami-Hamrah, 2017)). The corresponding author would like to thank the participants for their kind and helpful suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.