"My Goal Is to Surf It, Not Just Stand There": Professors' Sense-Making Strategies in University Open Online Learning Initiatives

• In Event: 16.058 - Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: 16.058-8 - Online Education and Flipped Classrooms

Abstract

Faculty are often portrayed as powerless victims of a technological tsunami destined to restructure the higher education industry, academe, and the academic labor market. A major review of MOOC research critiqued “the political economy of the MOOC discourse,” calling for research that examines, “the experience of those generally ‘silenced’ in discussion of MOOC provision,” including the “material consequences of participation in MOOCs” on “the large population of MOOC tutors and teachers” (Selwyn & Bulfin, 2014, p. 4). This study examines the sensemaking processes of faculty who choose to open their courses, specifically how they make sense of this experience on the expression of their subject matter and the performance of personally valued social roles within their academic work.

Authors

• Chris R Glass, Old Dominion University

• Andy Saltarelli, Stanford University

• Amy Collier, Stanford University