Getting “Girly” Online: The Case for Gendering Online Spaces

Introduction

MOOCs, like so many of the technological tools that have come before, are enjoying unprecedented popularity. By the end of 2015, more than 550 universities were offering MOOC courses and an estimated 35 million students had signed up for at least one class (Shah, 2015). But along with this massive popularity comes fear, distrust, and dismissal from educators and students alike. Lauded by many as inexpensive means to educate the masses and to erase barriers between the ivory towers of the educational elites and the general population, still others fear MOOCs are inferior in rigor and retention to traditional courses and worse still may be considered educational tools for “colonization” designed from the creator’s rather than from the learner’s perspective (Barlow, 2014). Like home computers, the Internet, and online education before, MOOCs hold promise as a great equalizer in education. Reflecting on his first encounter with MOOCs in the course CCK08: Connectivism and Connective Knowledge, considered by many the MOOC that started it all in MOOC education, Charles Lowe (2014) recalls “It seemed to me a fascinating experiment in online learning that continued a rich tradition of experimentation by educational technology innovators interested in seeing the ways in which the tools of the Internet and electronic discourse could provide alternative – or even better – methods for learning” (p. ix). MOOCs, and their digital and networked educational predecessors, promise limitless access to learning for all, a breaking down of hierarchies, and an end to discrimination of all sorts. While some of these goals were partially reached, each technology also failed to realize its utopian promise. This chapter considers ways MOOCs specifically fall short of goals for universal access to education and instead appear to perpetuate the much-debated digital gender divide persisting in online spaces. Teacher-research suggests that encouraging discussions about gender and other markers of difference in online spaces may be a key strategy for teaching critical thinking and cultural awareness, and I suggest that gendering MOOCs may also be a strategy for closing the gender gap. I offer here reflections on two fully online girlhood studies courses interrogating notions of gender performance, norms, and scripts as successful models for positioning gender disparity as a teaching tool rather than a barrier to learning. This model may provide insight on ways to invite more female teachers and students to populate MOOCs.