MOOCS Are Dead! – Open Education and the Quality of Online Courses Towards a Common Quality Reference Framework

Abstract

This paper presents the current status of Open Education and MOOCs as the main instruments and drivers in the publicity. The evolution from e-Learning towards MOOCs and Open Education is introduced as basis to discuss the main question of this paper: Is Open Education a revolution or are MOOCs only marketing instruments? According to Marx, a revolution is the complete change of the production relations and means and their new ownership and direction towards changed production power. Transferred to Open Education, the current question is whether Open Education is indeed a social revolution for individual learners, educational institutions and the society worldwide or whether MOOCs as the most prominent appearance of open learning are only marketing instruments by the traditional educational systems. The presentation at EDEN Conference 2016 will start the debate and following research will provide further argumentations for future discussions.