Peace Affordances in Digital Education: A Comparative Analysis of Coursera and FutureLearn in a Divided World

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Digital Education Innovations for Equity and Peace: Tools, Evidence, and Design Approaches

Proposal

Introduction
While emerging technologies in education are widely recognized for their transformative potential, their systematic mobilization toward the urgent challenge of peacebuilding in a divided world remains theoretically and empirically underexplored within comparative and international education. This comparative case study examines how the digital infrastructures of two representative MOOC platforms, Coursera (US-based) and FutureLearn (UK-based), provide different affordances for peacebuilding, social cohesion, and dialogue among learners across diverse national and geopolitical contexts, with particular attention to marginalized and conflict-affected communities.
Theory
This study is theoretically grounded in Johan Galtung’s foundational distinction between negative and positive peace. Negative peace denotes the absence of direct violence, whereas positive peace entails the presence of institutions, structures, and attitudes that sustain justice, inclusion, and reconciliation (Galtung, 1969;1996; Institute for Economics & Peace, 2015). Galtung’s framework provides critical criteria for evaluating digital infrastructures' peacebuilding potential. This reinforces the stance that technology is not neutral and connects with affordance theory, which posits technologies as structuring action possibilities, simultaneously enabling and constraining participation, recognition, and dialogue (Gibson, 1979; Norman, 1988). The notion of technological environmentality captures how platforms, through architectural, institutional, and expressive choices, structure the temporal, spatial, and social conditions of learning and social actions. Building on this insight, the study conceptualizes MOOCs as global education infrastructures that structurally enable or constrain learning environments conducive to peace. It further proposes the concept of “peace affordances” to denote specific design conditions within digital platforms, such as moderated dialogue mechanisms, inclusive interface design, and equitable access structures, that actively facilitate justice, dialogue, and social cohesion.
Methodology
This study addresses two questions: (1) How do MOOC platform architectures configure peace affordances in a divided world? and (2) How do Coursera and FutureLearn differ in the peace affordances embedded within their design architectures? We adopt a comparative case study (CCS) design, following a most-similar systems logic, selecting Coursera and FutureLearn as comparable in function and scale to global MOOC platforms, but originating from distinct US/UK institutional and geopolitical contexts, while remaining functionally and scalably comparable. To ensure comparability, two thematically identical MOOCs by the same educator team, offered concurrently on both platforms, were sampled, controlling for content and pedagogy while foregrounding architectural differences. Data collection employed a structured platform walkthrough method (Light, Burgess, & Duguay, 2018), producing a time-bounded, versioned archive of interface captures. Documentation focused on static, non-personalized elements, such as onboarding, course shells, forums, peer-review, and guidelines, across devices and locales, with all identifiers anonymized.
The analysis applies multimodal social semiotic analysis (MSSA) (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001) to interpret textual, visual, and interactional features of platform interfaces, mapped onto five peace-affordance dimensions: (i) access and inclusion (entry pathways, enrolment options, accessibility tools); (ii) dialogic infrastructure (discussion forums, prompts); (iii) recognition and voice (learner visibility, multilingual support); (iv) safety and governance (community standards, reporting functions); and (v) curation and visibility (ranking, framing). Rigor was ensured through a two-stage comparative procedure: within-case mapping of Coursera and FutureLearn to examine platform peace affordance, followed by cross-case matrix comparison to identify variations in kind and degree.
Findings
The findings reveal that Coursera and FutureLearn encode distinct peace affordances across three domains: Access, Interaction, and Governance. Access concerns entry barriers; Interaction shapes dialogic recognition of diverse voices; and Governance regulates visibility, and epistemic diversity. This tripartite framework synthesizes the analysis and offers a transferable lens for assessing educational technologies beyond MOOCs.
Access. Coursera employs a low-friction entry model by highlighting a seven-day free trial and automatically localizing its interface, supported by multilingual transcripts, reducing initial barriers and enhancing linguistic inclusion. However, its requirement for payment details reintroduces market-based exclusion. FutureLearn, by contrast, retains English interface and foregrounds paid subscription. Linguistic and economic barriers limit its inclusivity as a global infrastructure.
Interaction. Coursera’s post-before-view policy raises the cost of participation and encourages perfunctory contributions, but its embedded translation tool constitutes a significant peace affordance by enabling cross-linguistic recognition and advancing epistemic justice. FutureLearn’s open comment streams support more reflective engagement, but the absence of translation tools restricts dialogue to an Anglophone public sphere, marginalizing non-English voices.
Governance. Coursera curates discussions through “Top” posts ranked by likes, reinforcing majoritarian visibility and potentially silencing minority perspectives. FutureLearn empowers learners with multiple filtering options (e.g., newest, following), but risks fostering self-segregation and fragmented discourse. Neither platform explicitly embeds peace education principles within its moderation guidelines.
Overall, Coursera reflects a techno-liberal logic of scalable connectivity and procedural inclusion, while FutureLearn privileges organic dialogue within an English-centric community. Both reveal the non-neutrality of educational technology, embodying institutional logics that involve distinct trade-offs between constraining and enabling conditions for peace.
Contribution
This paper makes two core contributions. Conceptually, it extends affordance theory into the normative domain of peacebuilding by introducing the notion of digital peace affordances and operationalizing them through a transferable Access–Interaction–Governance framework. This framework evaluates how platform architectures shape the enabling conditions of positive peace—who gains entry, how recognition and dialogue are structured, and how visibility, safety, and epistemic diversity are governed. This moves educational technology research beyond usability and learning outcomes toward justice, inclusion, and cohesion. By aligning multimodal social semiotic analysis with this lens, the study offers a rigorous, design-focused tool that is portable across digital learning systems.
Empirically, the cross-case comparative analysis of Coursera and FutureLearn demonstrates how divergent institutional logics are concretely encoded in platform architectures. These findings show that global MOOC platforms do not merely deliver content but actively mediate inclusion, recognition, and governance, thereby reproducing or mitigating social divisions. This insight positions educational technology at the heart of comparative and international education debates on peacebuilding.
In conclusion, the study contributes both a generalizable evaluative lens for assessing peace affordances in digital education and a comparative account of how leading MOOC architectures condition the possibilities for “Education and Peace in a Divided World.” The framework also points toward areas where design and governance could be more closely aligned with peacebuilding goals, offering insights relevant to educators, policymakers, and technology developers.

Author

• Yan Zhuang, University College London