Crossposted from the Day of DH 2014 Blog.
Dr Dominic Bryan, Director of the Institute for Irish Studies at Queen’s, is running an experimental course offering via FutureLearn a UK-based MOOC (that I will admit not being previously aware of). Bryan’s course is looking at: Identity, conflict and public space: contest and transformation. Although the nature of the emergence and sustainability of the various MOOC programmes is a huge discussion, this course faces a different sort of challenge.
Exposing discussion of what is predictably provocative by design raises a huge issue around what sort of ‘learning environment’ can be acknowledged under the aegis the university. It is crucial for this course to allow contestation and conflict as part of its delivery. Studying by doing in this context threatens the nature of ‘management’ of the discourse by the institution.
The course is set to roll starting 28 April, but the negotiations over how comfortable the institution may be with attaching its name to such a contentious experience is taking place now. This raises some important questions around how we teach in an era of social scholarship.
Now of course Dominic has admitted that it involves himself stripping through layers of history in his own performative self-exposure – hmmmm …. edgy indeed.