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Bildung in a Digital World: The Case of MOOCs

Massive open online courses (MOOCs), in theory, allow people to study wherever and whenever they want. They promise to broaden access and availability of education, allowing people to ‘up-skill’ themselves. As an important innovation, they provoke reflection on the meaning and purpose of the university. A number of humanities scholars have voiced scepticism as to whether MOOCs can deliver the sort of intellectual training and personal cultivation (Bildung) that is provided within the walls of the university, where staff and students interact face-to-face, in relatively intimate settings, to discuss issues they deem important rather than being driven by external definitions of relevance. In this chapter, after introducing MOOCs, we explore the most common arguments about why MOOCs would be incompatible with the values of the humanities. We then question the extent to which MOOCs really do threaten these values. We do this by eliciting advantages and disadvantages from people’s experiences with MOOCs so far. Far from confirming the sceptics’ perceived incompatibility between a technology-intensive environment and the Bildung ideal, experiences with MOOCs to date may actually serve to promote several of the values of the humanities. Drawing on theories of technological mediation, we propose that instead of shunning MOOCs, the humanities should be thinking about how to facilitate Bildung within MOOCs. In this way, they can have a lasting and desirable impact on the future of higher education.