Education International
and measurable performance improvement. The market leaders, Blackboard and Canvas, are also partnered with Amazon Web Services for data storage and analytics capacity, ultimately enabling AWS to penetrate the HE market through mundane back-end cloud infrastructure and services. LMS platforms are likely to become even more central to HE teaching with the ongoing shift to online and hybrid format degree provision. This also brings new sources of expertise into the design of education, reframing it as ‘hybrid’ learning experiences that are enabled by ‘learning design’ and the pedagogic capacities and constraints that technology affords.
4. Return of the MOOC Online learning platforms have become central to the operations of colleges and universities worldwide with the closure of campuses and the cancellation of face-to-face teaching. Although LMS platforms, as detailed previously, have been mobilised for online teaching, specific product categories such as massive open online courses (MOOCs) and online program management (OPM) platforms have become especially attractive to institutions seeking ways to deliver courses remotely, and to edtech investors seeking profitable returns from the pandemic. Online learning was already a major area of market growth prior to COVID-19, with providers reporting a huge surge in demand with the onset of the pandemic. These online learning platforms are programmed pedagogic environments that mix together the capacities of social media, networking and data processing technologies with demands for universities to make their course offers more accessible to nontraditional or international students. Interest in MOOCs first peaked in 2012 as universities were attracted to the model of offering free or low-cost courses at huge scale and reach to nontraditional students, with US-based providers such as Udacity, edX, and Coursera effectively blending online teaching and social media into an investor-friendly model of disruptive education.84 Udacity later announced its ‘nanodegrees’ program in key technology and business subjects (such as AI, data science, and programming), allowing students temporary free access, followed by paid-for courses, as a modular alternative to conventional on-campus routes to a degree. Although initial hype later slumped, as industry and investor marketing contrasted with
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Pappano, L. 2012, 2 November. The Year of the MOOC. New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/education/ edlife/massive-open-online-courses-are-multiplying-at-a-rapid-pace.html
