Page - 4 - in Radical Solutions and Open Science - An Open Approach to Boost Higher Education

4 M. Weller • building reputation of individuals or institutionsor communities • improving efficiency, cost and quality of production • opening access toknowledge • enhancing pedagogy and the students’ learning experience • building technological momentum. As the authors point out, these motivations are not exclusive and often overlap, andoneof themexplicitly relates toopenaccess.Similarly, theHewlettFoundation (2013)statefivemotivationsforwhytheyfundtheOERfield, thelastofwhichagain relates toopen access: • radically reduce costs • deliver greater learning efficiency • promote continuous improvement of instruction and personalised learning • encourage translation and localisation of content • offer equal access toknowledge forall. This range of motivations is perhaps not surprising. Universities, including open universities,are themselvescomplex institutions that fulfilavarietyof roles, includ- ing education, research, centres of innovation (Etzkowitz, Webster, Gebhardt, & Terra,2000),publicengagement,agentsofsocialchange(Brennan,King,&Lebeau, 2004), curation and preservation of knowledge and the presence of an independent, trusted voice. So, it should not be a surprise that open education should similarly have myriad roles and purposes. 1.1.3 MOOCs The third main strand to explore for open access to education is the MOOC phe- nomenon. Collins dictionary defines a MOOC as ‘a free online course that many people can study’. The nature of delivery and free cost are the main components in this definition. MOOCs had some relation to the OER movement, as early MOOC pioneers such as David Wiley and Stephen Downes had also been influential in the OERmovement.However, itwaswith thedeploymentofMOOCsbyStanfordPro- fessor Sebastian Thrun on an Artificial Intelligence course, which attracted around 100,000learnersandsubsequentinterestfromventurecapitalists thatMOOCsreally came to public attention. The New York Times declared 2012 to be ‘the year of the MOOC’ (Pappano, 2012) and this had little to do with either of the previous two movements addressed previously. MOOCs were free to access, but they generally didnotcomeadoptanopenlicencesotheircontentdidnotboastthefreedomssetout above for OER. Learners were largely unsupported, and so MOOCs did not adopt the Supported Open Learning model of the OU, which places an emphasis on the support of part-time tutors. Several problems began to emerge with MOOCs after the initial enthusiasm, which sawa reiningback on someof the ambitions. The key ones were: