TY - JOUR
T1 - Curriculum meets platform
T2 - A reconceptualisation of flexible pathways in open and higher education
AU - Vanermen, Lanze
AU - Vlieghe, Joris
AU - Decuypere, Mathias
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - In open and higher education, digital technologies are increasingly used to enable flexible learning pathways and unbundle programs into separate courses. Whereas technologies have been praised for enhancing the flexibility of curricula, the implications of going digital have yet to be fully explored in curriculum studies. This article aims to critically investigate how an open education platform, OpenLearn, describes, prescribes, and enacts a particular form of curriculum. Rather than understanding platforms as passive tools for facilitating education, the article draws on theoretical and methodological ideas from science and technology studies (STS) to approach “curriculum” as a collection of socio-technical practices in which platforms play an active role. The findings of our analysis detail how networks of human and other-than-human actors are situated in a wider ecology and enact five curricular practices: prescribing, mobilising, enrolling, evaluating, and rebundling. We propose “platform curriculum” as a sensitising concept to investigate how technologies enable and constrain these practices instead of simply flexibilising them. With this article, we argue for the further adoption of STS in curriculum studies to disentangle the specific ways in which technologies, too, shape education.
AB - In open and higher education, digital technologies are increasingly used to enable flexible learning pathways and unbundle programs into separate courses. Whereas technologies have been praised for enhancing the flexibility of curricula, the implications of going digital have yet to be fully explored in curriculum studies. This article aims to critically investigate how an open education platform, OpenLearn, describes, prescribes, and enacts a particular form of curriculum. Rather than understanding platforms as passive tools for facilitating education, the article draws on theoretical and methodological ideas from science and technology studies (STS) to approach “curriculum” as a collection of socio-technical practices in which platforms play an active role. The findings of our analysis detail how networks of human and other-than-human actors are situated in a wider ecology and enact five curricular practices: prescribing, mobilising, enrolling, evaluating, and rebundling. We propose “platform curriculum” as a sensitising concept to investigate how technologies enable and constrain these practices instead of simply flexibilising them. With this article, we argue for the further adoption of STS in curriculum studies to disentangle the specific ways in which technologies, too, shape education.
KW - Curriculum
KW - flexibility
KW - open education
KW - platform
KW - STS
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85139142621&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/03626784.2022.2120347
DO - 10.1080/03626784.2022.2120347
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85139142621
SN - 0362-6784
VL - 52
SP - 443
EP - 468
JO - Curriculum Inquiry
JF - Curriculum Inquiry
IS - 4
ER -