In a relatively short period of time, massive open online courses (MOOCs) have become a considerable topic of research and debate, and the number of available MOOCs is rapidly growing. Along with issues of formal recognition and accreditation, this growth in the number of MOOCs being developed increases the relevance of assessment quality. Within…

Glenn Savage (2014) poses a serious issue to the field of public pedagogy: to articulate what "form" of public is being evoked in and by the research. In this article, I will conceptualize the formation of a prophetic public, one that exhibits both critique and hope, hallmarks of the prophetic stance. This research is grounded in a…

This study explores and characterizes learners' participation patterns in MOOC forums, as well as the factors that correlate with learners' participation. Educational data mining and learning analytics methods were used to retrieve and analyze the learners' interpersonal interaction data, which had accumulated in the Coursera log files. The…

Apart from classroom presentations to their instructors and peer groups, STEM students have limited opportunities or encouragement to engage in guided communication of scientific concepts to others (family, friends, or the general public). A critical need exists for accurate, comprehensible science to be disseminated to these groups. To develop…

In this paper, we studied the implementation of a course on global history as a blended section of a massive open online course (MOOC) and the learning challenges faced by the students in three crisis contexts: Azraq refugee camp (Jordan), Kakuma refugee camp (Kenya), and Amman urban refugee center (Jordan). The results showed that poor Internet…

Background: Previous research reported the effectiveness of a curriculum-based self-care intervention for students administered in the context of a course on behavior change. Purpose: The study evaluated the effectiveness of the self-care intervention for learners in a publicly available massive open online course (MOOC), who completed the course…

In this article we explore examples of public pedagogical actions and interventions, reading them through a social justice education framework lens. In our discussion we start with definitions of social justice, public pedagogy and case study methodologies. Then, we look at a variety of international examples to highlight the pervasiveness of…

MOOCs are large online courses in which any individual with access to the internet can enroll, usually for free. Distance and online education are not new, but the scale and scope of MOOCs raise novel questions about access to higher education, faculty work, and the adoption of new technologies for teaching and learning. There is little literature…

This study adds a new perspective to the observations about connectivist interaction behavior in cMOOCs by extending the notion of network building from the perspective of individuals. We explore the possibility of building a learning network named Personal Social Knowledge Network (PSKN) to support in the monitoring of learning performance and…

The great expansion of participation in higher education in Russia in the post-Soviet period was the layered and contradictory result of both conditions established in the Soviet period, and the structuring of reforms after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992. The Soviet government was strongly committed to the expansion of education across…

This paper aims to question anew the popular and supposedly self-evident affirmation of education, in its modern incarnation as in its historical notion. The "naive" questions suggest that we have recently taken for granted that education ought to be for the masses, that it ought to be upbringing, and that it is better than ignorance.…

A growing body of evidence indicates that, increasingly, the public is engaging with science in a wide range of informal environments, which can be any setting outside of school such as community-based programs, festivals, libraries, or home. Yet undergraduate and graduate schools often don't prepare scientists for public communication. This…

This article critically examines how news media, as a form of public pedagogy, functioned to 'educate' the public about the Standing Rock pipeline protests in North Dakota, USA. Drawing on literature in public pedagogy, social movement learning and communication studies, we employed ethnographic content analysis to identify emergent patterns,…

In this paper, the authors provide an overview of the unschooling movement, highlighting the important philosophical differences, among other differences, between unschooling and homeschooling. They then argue that to the extent that traditional schooling is a project of massification--increasingly dominated by a neoliberal ethos in our…

Although the University of the future will insatiably chip away at some opportunities from the University of today, although the advent of the ever-innovating technology will make the former more viable and the later more vulnerable, although the inevitable wave of changes that have swept other older industries loom, although the MOOCs and online…