8 MOOCs and widening participation in higher education From competency to capability in the evaluation of educational technologies Remy Yi Siang Low Introduction A good educational system should have three purposes: it should provide all who want to learn with access to available resources at any time in their lives; empower all who want to share what they know to find those who want to learn it from them; and, finally, furnish all who want to present an issue to the public with the opportunity to make their challenge known. (Illich 1971 p. 44) The New York Times declared 2012 to be the ‘Year of the MOOC’. MOOCs is an acronym for Massive Open Online Courses. Simply defined, MOOCs are ‘massive’ because they are designed to enrol tens of thousands of learners; ‘open’ because, at least in theory, anyone with an Internet connection can enrol in the course for free without prerequisites; ‘online’ because the content is delivered in modules through online video lectures and interaction takes place in web discussion groups; and, finally, they are ‘courses’ because they have specific start and end dates, student assess- ments, online tests and quizzes, and proctored exams. Upon completion, some may offer a ‘verified certificate’ of completion. A key claim of MOOCs providers and advocates is that through this innovative format, high quality education can and should be made available to everyone (e.g. see Agarwal in Parr 2013). By the end of 2013, the largest MOOC provider Coursera had over 4 mil- lion enrolments while its closest competitor, edX, had over one million users (Anders 2013; Conway 2013). At its peak in the 2012–2013 period, there were almost daily reports in the print and online media about some aspect of MOOCs, with the foci of discussion mostly centred on their astronomical enrolment numbers or their extremely high drop-out rates of up to 90 per cent (‘The attack of the MOOCs’ 2013). There are also daily commentaries on whether MOOCs represent a mere ripple in the world of higher education or a tsunami that will bring down the walls of the traditional university, and whether this will be for the better or worse. In focusing on how the effects of such new educational technologies may be measured and evaluated, however, these types of commentary often leave unexplored the more immediately