(Pré)configuring pedagogic agency in the global dispositive of edX: the discursive-material dimension of MOOCs and their forums

Zienkowski, Jan;Lambotte, François
(2020) 25th DiscourseNet Conference on Global Dispositives — Location: Tyumen (12.November.2020)

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Online interactions are always enabled and constrained by the discursive – material characteristics of the dispositives in which they are embedded, as well as by the ways in which these dispositives are configured and used. This paper examines how MOOC dispositives pre-configure and shape possibilities for social interaction among MOOC participants and teachers. We will demonstrate that the agency of MOOC participants and teachers performed online cannot be abstracted from the material possibilities offered by the platform under examination. In order to substantiate this point, we focus on three case studies. Each study focuses on a social science MOOC taught on the MOOC platform edX. We will ask how forum interactions are embedded in the overall material-discursive architecture of each MOOC. We will focus on the question how assistants and professors of each MOOC conceptualize and assess (the place of) forum interactions in their respective courses? We will also investigate to what extent the intentions of the teaching teams materialize in the practical organization of each MOOC. The data used for this study include qualitative interviews with professors and assistants, screenshots of different editions of the MOOCs under investigation, as well as selected forum interactions. This study is embedded in a poststructuralist relational ontology and in a constitutive view on communication. The analyses have been conducted with the support of the CAQDAS package NVIVO12.
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Zienkowski, J., & Lambotte, F. (2020). (Pré)configuring pedagogic agency in the global dispositive of edX: the discursive-material dimension of MOOCs and their forums. 25th DiscourseNet Conference on Global Dispositives, Tyumen.