Now out in the electronic journal of contemporary japanese studies, my thoughts on online learning spaces and MOOCs.
Teaching Japanese Popular Culture in the MOOC World
by Chris McMorran
Since 2012, the growth of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) has stirred excitement and controversy in higher education. Open-access, fully online courses are but the latest advance in a long history of distance learning. However, the recent combination of advanced course-hosting technologies, enthusiasm for MOOCs at institutions like Harvard and Stanford, and vast start-up capital for MOOC providers like Coursera, edX, and Udacity has led to speculation that MOOCs may drastically alter higher education, for better or worse.
What will the future hold for MOOCs in Japanese Studies, specifically for courses about or incorporating Japanese popular culture? This paper addresses this question and explains the relevance of the topic for anyone engaged in teaching about, or with, Japanese popular culture. This includes not only individuals who teach courses in film, media, or cultural studies departments specifically about Japanese film, anime, manga, games, cosplay, literature, music, television dramas, etc., but also those who use examples of Japan’s rich cultural heritage to teach about something else, like history, sociology, anthropology, geography, politics, international relations, marketing, business, and more. Anyone who relies on Japanese popular culture to make a point, provide an example, define a term, or even entertain, needs to be cognisant of how MOOCs might shape what they do and how they do it.
I hope to stimulate discussion about MOOCs in Japanese Studies. Although there is very little peer-reviewed scholarship on MOOCs, there has been a media explosion of news reports, commentaries, essays, videos, and interviews with MOOC advocates and skeptics. In this paper I draw on dozens of mostly online materials, as well as email correspondence with several scholars who have developed or are developing popular culture-rich MOOCs, in order to: 1) define MOOCs and trace their recent growth, acclaim, and controversy; 2) discuss challenges that must be overcome to take advantage of MOOCs, most notably copyright; and 3) raise some questions about MOOCs that have yet to be widely discussed, but may affect us all in the future. Overall, I question the ability of MOOCs to democratise education and fear they may create a fissure between institutions, departments, and scholars who can capitalise on their promise and those who cannot.
Read the rest of the article here: http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/ejcjs/vol13/iss2/mcmorran.html
