(Un)bordering European Education: Social Topological Accounts of Online Openness

The purpose of this PhD-project is generally situated at undertaking a qualitative analysis of the field of Open Education (OE). Over the last years, OE has gained increasing traction from scholars, policy organizations and media the like. The popularity of OE is particularly evidenced in the recent proliferation of Massive Open Online Courses or MOOCs. MOOCs, it seems, are all over the place and are propagated to constitute a powerful alternative for more traditional types of education. Even though OE in general and MOOCs in particular have been subject to increasing hyperbole and grand speech, academic literature has pointed to the observation that such rhetorics are not always attuned to concrete educational practices. For instance, studies have started to unveil some of the misconceptions and challenges associated with the dominance of MOOCs in contemporary popular discourse. MOOCs are only one - albeit influential - exemplification of OE (other instances include SPOCs, DOCCs, SMOCs, POOCs, LAPs, etc - Hollands & Tirthali, 2014). Secondly, studies have shown that the original theoretical underpinnings of OE are not always adhered to in contemporary MOOC practices (e.g. Hall, 2015). Thirdly, it can be noted that at present the larger part of the literature on OE starts from a predominant (post-) positivist, quantitative perspective. These general observations provide the context for the present doctoral project. More specifically, in this dissertation we will disentangle some of the mystifications present in the dominant discourse as well as address following issues in detail: - What are differences and similarities between programs, platforms and other providers of OE? How do these different initiative relate to each other, and what is the relation with their actual users? - Which motivations and/or barriers are present for individuals to partake in OE? - In which context did original OE initiatives proliferate, and how does this relate to current evolutions? - How does online/open learning take place in concrete practice? In order to research these newly emerging digital constellations, innovative qualitative research methods will be developed. Depending on the specificities of the selected case studies, the development of following methods will be pursued: - The development of a method that allows to make a typology of OE, with specific usage of the possibilities of qualitative data visualization. - Development of a qualitative text mining analysis, which will allow to focus on the specific discourse(s) being deployed at present - Development of qualitative, digital observation protocol to study the usage of OE by students and/or teachers. References Hall, R. (2015). For a political economy of massive open online courses. Learning Media and Technology, 40(3), 265-286. Hollands, F.M. & Tirthali, D. (2014). MOOCs, Expectations and Reality, Full Report. Center for Benefit-Cost Studies for Education Teachers College, Columbia University, May, 2014.