Abstract
This chapter opens with a discussion of MOOCs (massive open online courses). In 2018 there were some 101 million enrolled “learners” in one or more of the 11,400 courses offered by these platforms. While there are several not-for-profit MOOCs, many of them are aimed at making money, and Coursera, our case study, is the leader of the pack. The company currently has some 37 million learners and made roughly USD 140 million in revenues in 2018. Revenues come from charging individuals, companies and universities for different services (such as certifications on the completion of freely accessible courses). Profits are to some extent based on unpaid knowledge delivered by teachers through online classes. In most cases teachers are paid once for these classes, or receive no additional payment at all, despite the fact that they are streamed several times to huge numbers of “learners”. Some 900 universities partner with Coursera and are positioned as middlemen: they lawfully provide the courses developed by their teachers, contribute with some kind of “trademark” and deliver recognition (the certification, degree, etc.) to the learners in exchange for some of Coursera’s revenues. This is only possible due to some intellectual property regulations and contracts that we discuss in detail. But for this exploitative relation to succeed, ideology is also needed. In this case, we analyze the role played by specific vocabulary (“learners”, “partners”, “instructors”), concepts (such as freedom, openness, community, peers) and the association between value and labor time.
This chapter draws and elaborates on previous research conducted during April and May of 2017 and generously financed by Westminster Institute of Advanced Studies fellowship program (Zukerfeld, 2017b). The author is extremely grateful to Prof. Christian Fuchs, then director of WIAS, for his support and guidance. The final report of that research is available at: https://www.westminster.ac.uk/the-westminster-institute-for-advanced-studies/publications/westminster-advanced-studies.
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Notes
- 1.
Incidentally, it is important to point out that the other meaning of “open”, which is the most important for free and open source software, and more broadly for the “open knowledge” movements that is, the possibility of modifying and redistributing derivative works, is generally not recognized by any of the MOOC providers.
- 2.
The only available data for Coursera for partners is old. It comes from The Chronicle of Higher Education:
In a typical case, the company would charge the university a flat fee of $3,000 for “course development.” After that, Coursera would charge a per-student fee that would decrease as more students registered for the course. The first 500 students would cost the university $25 per student; the next 500 would cost $15 per student; the university would pay the company $8 for each student beyond that. (Kolowich, 2013)
The same figures can be found in a contract from 2013 with the University of Tennessee available at: https://parezcoydigo.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/signedcourseracontract.pdf
- 3.
There are other relevant legal frameworks, such as those that regulate how much Coursera’s clients (individuals, universities, companies) must pay for products. However, for the sake of conciseness, we will not deal with those in this chapter.
- 4.
Take the US law. The current definition of ¨Works made for hire¨ can be found in section 101 of USC 17:
A “work made for hire” is—(1) a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment; or (2) a work specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to a collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, as a translation, as a supplementary work, as a compilation, as an instructional text, as a test, as answer material for a test, or as an atlas, if the parties expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them that the work shall be considered a work made for hire. (USC 17, 101, disponible en http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/101.html)
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Lund, A., Zukerfeld, M. (2020). Profiting from Massive Open Online Courses. In: Corporate Capitalism's Use of Openness. Dynamics of Virtual Work. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28219-6_6
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