ABSTRACT
This chapter explores why the massive open online courses (MOOC) has not (yet) lived up to this altruistic intent. Through a critical analysis of changing popular and academic discourses surrounding the MOOC phenomenon, the chapter explores why MOOCs did not fulfill the mission to reach unprecedented numbers of non-traditional students. The chapter explores possible reasons why non-traditional students have shied away from MOOCs by first considering the problems associated with massification principles in a post-Fordist context. Keeping with Henry Ford Model T comparison, three automobile analogies offer partial explanations for MOOC's failure to reach non-traditional student markets. The first considers the unwritten road rules that underpin MOOC pedagogy; the second highlights on-the-road costs, including licensing, maintaining and meaningfully certifying MOOC study; and the third considers the single MOOC as part of an unfinished assembly line, where the full product is, as yet, out of the scope of MOOC offerings.
