Running head: Redistributed Knowledge

Redistributed Knowledge Leads to Surprisingly Little Redistributed Wealth

A Surprising Consequence of Current Instructional Technology
H. Christopher Erlin
California State University, Monterey Bay

Running head: Redistributed Knowledge

Redistributed Knowledge Leads to Surprisingly Little Redistributed Wealth
One of the most significant technological developments in education in the last few years is
the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). The design of the MOOC allows a much wider
audience to benefit from a single instructional design. While their access and design makes them
appealing and easily available, their efficacy, in terms of instructional design principals are often
less impressive. (Margaryan, A, 2015). One primary stated intention of the expansion of
MOOCs has been to bring quality learning to those historically unable to access this level of
education, and through this, to level the worldwide educational and thus economic playing field.
With better educational opportunities come better employment prospects, and better economic
health. However, while this effort to redistribute the educational commodity may have
foundations in philanthropy and equity, in practice, the newly created opportunities for wealth
will not substantially benefit this historically underprivileged class, and rather will remain largely
in the hands of the same, privileged populations that have been in positions of power for decades.
In 1969, when the British Open University began, the stated mission was lofty and
philanthropic: The first, and most urgent task before us is to cater for the many thousands of
people, fully capable of a higher education, who, for one reason or another, do not get it
(Konnikova, 2014). The concept of the MOOC has been crafted, in many ways, from this same
kernel idea as the Open University and with the same intentions for public good through
education. The premise of the MOOC movement is as commendable as it is democratic: quality
education should not be a luxury good. (Konnikova, 2014).
However, in practice, very little of the power and benefit of the MOOC has trickled down
to the disadvantaged as intended. Dr. Sebastian Thrun, cofounder of Udacity, and famous for one
of the earliest MOOC implementations of top quality education when he opened his Stanford

Running head: Redistributed Knowledge

University course on artificial intelligence in 2011, is on the forefront of bringing MOOCs to
popular education. He has seen the tool implemented in a number of different venues and had
access to substantial data on users, but he is not optimistic about its egalitarian benefit. "The
basic MOOC is a great thing for the top 5 percent of the student body, but not a great thing for
the bottom 95 percent," says Dr. Thrun. (Selingo, 2014) Countries where the greatest disparity
exists between the educated and uneducated had high hopes for the MOOC. In countries like
Brazil, China, India, and South Africa, only 5% of the country had college degrees, and thus
MOOCs might bring greater equity through access to education. However, in studies of some
larger MOOCs in 2012-2013, those same countries mirrored a discouraging overall trend, that
80% of the MOOC students already have a degree of some kind. (Selingo, J. 2014)
As is so often the case, while the goals may be heartfelt and philanthropic, the
implementation follows the financial opportunity. Business in the United States, and many other
developed countries, are betting on the value of MOOCs by investing millions of dollars in their
implementations. Venture capitalists have invested over $100 million dollars in just two of the
big players in the MOOC game, Coursera and Udasity. (Hepler, 2013). Courseras CEO, and
ex-Yale President, Richard Levin, sees MOOCs not as a replacement of higher academia at all,
rather Its aim is to supplement the existing pedagogy, with relevant exposure to industrycentric knowledge (Targeted News Service, 2014).
For a number of years, weve heard that graduates are entering the work force ill prepared
for the roles needed in todays business economy. Levins plan for Coursera seems to suggest
that this platform will target skills to fix that gap between academic preparations and the needs of
industry. However, based upon surveys of employers and staffing companies, explicit skill
deficiencies arent what new graduates are lacking. More than twice as many respondents claim

Running head: Redistributed Knowledge

that applicants are lacking communication skills, and organizational and interpersonal
proficiencies rather than technical skills. (White, 2013). Yet, when this researcher performed a
search for courses that address communications on the Coursera website, only 18 course
options come up, out of their advertised 400+ courses. Thus, it seems, there is misalignment
between what industry wants, and what the industry leading MOOCs are providing.
Venture capitalists arent in the business of making financial investments on businesses that
miss the mark. So if MOOCs are utilized by the already established rather than the
disenfranchised, not intended to replace academia, and only peripherally address the
organizational and communication skills most wanted by employers, what value is hidden in the
MOOCs that isnt visible to the public eye? The answer is very likely big data. With the advent
of computers, internet, mobile devices and the associated individual breadcrumbs left in our
daily use of these now ubiquitous tools, a massive amount of data about people, their interests
and their activities is available. 90% of the data in the world today was created in the last two
years and there will be 44 times more of it by the year 2020, according to a 2011 McKinsey
Global report, Big Data: The Next Frontier for Innovation, Competition, and Productivity. This is
big data, and it is, many believe, the future. (Gobble, 2013)
MOOCs are computer based. Therefore they create data. A student using Coursera to build
their own pseudo-degree in computer engineering wants that data tracked. The student intends to
offer those courses as evidence of his or her employability and qualification. Employers want the
highly trained and best qualified, but in the new world of MOOCs, they can no longer rely upon
the traditional pedigree of Harvard or Stanford as the only validation; employers must consider
training from these non-traditional educational avenues like MOOCs. This poses a problem for
employers. First, how do they qualify and compare the various non-traditional educational

Running head: Redistributed Knowledge

mediums? Is a computer science Coursera course equivalent to a similarly titled Udacity course?
Are those equivalent to a seemingly comparable course at CSUMB? Someone has to build a
means of gathering the data that people will be claiming as evidence, collating that data, ranking
or rating that data for value, validating that data and synthesizing that data into a digestible
snapshot for employers to use as a hiring template, or academic institutions to use in acceptance.
This is a huge pile of data that has real relevance and value, and there is a significant and
necessary need for analytics to synthesis it and digest it.
While the data created by this new educational pathway is helpful in verifying education,
that isnt the only value of the data; the massive amounts of data on users, interests and
capabilities is a treasure in and of itself. It isnt unique to MOOCs, rather it is everywhere in
business today. It is the new gold rush. Businesses are salivating at what they can get from the
data. Retailers track our purchase history, and then target advertisements to promote repeat
buying or cross-selling similar products. Decisions about which ads to present are made based
upon predictive technologies. When one hundred customers who have bought a particular 6
items then purchase a particular 7th item, retailers target all other customers who have bought
those 6 items and try to encourage them to buy the 7th item. This is a simplified example of the
monetization of big data that is arguably the biggest focus of US Business today. To give a sense
of scale, earlier it was identified that venture capitalists have invested about $100 million in just
some leading MOOCs, and this might sound significant. However, investments in big data and
analytics, over the past few years, have risen to over thirty times as much, over $3 billion dollars,
and are continuing to rise. Business analysts predict that soon the big data service industry will
reach $11 billion. (VC Funding Trends in Big Data, 2013).

Running head: Redistributed Knowledge

The vast treasure troves of data that are created have apparently significant future-value to
marketers and others projecting future value of this as-yet-un-refined data. But just as in the
California gold rush of the 1800s in which the real winners werent the miners, but those
supporting miners selling shovels and such, there is a huge financial investment and opportunity
beyond the data. The process of taking the data, categorizing it, ordering it, and sifting through it
to find relevant trends and making data-based predictions is called analytics. The analytics
industry, that of mining the ore to produce gold so to speak, is projected to reach over $100
billion in the coming years. (VC Funding Trends in Big Data, 2013). The new financial
opportunities associated with this analytics market will surely benefit some; but the benefit is
predicted to be investors, investment banks, start-up companies, existing, nimble data processors,
and computer companies and potentially large scale data managers like IBM, Accenture, HP, Fair
Isaac, etc. (Jennings, A, 2013), not the uneducated, underemployed original targets of the MOOC
opportunity.
So, while MOOCs are significant and popular, and predictions are that it will contribute in
a meaningful way to economies around the world, this new way to redistribute knowledge is
likely to be less effective at redistributing wealth than intended. The billions of dollars generated
from MOOCs will continue to propagate their growth and maintenance, but likely as much for
the data and associated analytics as for the actual educational value. These financial gains will
not benefit uneducated mechanics from Brazil, or rice farmers from China who suddenly are able
to earn university-like diplomas and become white-collar professionals; because data shows most
of them still arent able to access the educational platform. Even if they are among the small
percentage of non-degree holders that do access it, the instruction itself isnt as highly effective
as it was original touted, due to questionable instructional design. And lastly, the metrics for

Running head: Redistributed Knowledge

treating these new educational pedigrees have yet to be designed, and thus cannot possibly have
been universally adopted to accept this new learning as a viable justification for a whole new
career opportunity for the Brazilian dreamer. Instead, the money will remain in the hands of the
class that has held the money for the last decades, the investors, investment banks, a few agile
entrepreneurs and the big technology corporations.

Running head: Redistributed Knowledge

Resources
Ex-yale president richard levin says massive open online course is the key to bridge the gap
between industry and academia.(2014, Nov 06). Targeted News Service, Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/docview/1621759754?accountid=10355
Gobble, M. (2013). Big data: The next big thing in innovation. Research Technology
Management, 56(1), 64-66.
Hepler, L. (2013, November 22). Coursera lands $20 million in new funding, despite online
education and MOOC business stumbles - Silicon Valley Business Journal. Retrieved
November 30, 2014.
Jennings, A. (2013, December 23). My 2014 Big Data Predictions; Heres' to the Winners.
Retrieved December 2, 2014, from http://www.fico.com/en/blogs/analyticsoptimization/my-2014-big-data-analytics-predictions-heres-to-the-winners/
Konnikova, M. (2014, November 7). Will Moocs be Flukes? Retrieved
November 29, 2014, from http://www.newyorker.com/science/mariakonnikova/moocs-failure-solutions
Margaryan, A. , Bianco, M. , & Littlejohn, A. (2015). Instructional quality of massive open
online courses (moocs). Computers & Education, 80, 77-83.
Selingo, J. (2014). Demystifying the mooc: Education life supplement. New York Times, ED.23.
VC Funding Trends in Big Data (IDC Report) - Experfy Insights. (2013, September 14).
Retrieved November 30, 2014, from http://www.experfy.com/blog/vc-funding-trends-bigdata-idc-report/

Running head: Redistributed Knowledge

White, M. (2013, November 10). The Real Reason New College Grads Cant Get Hired |
TIME.com. Retrieved November 30, 2014, from http://business.time.com/2013/11/10/thereal-reason-new-college-grads-cant-get-hired/