I response to Maha’s call, here’s a comment.

DeHay’s stunt strikes me as an unethical attempt to make an unnecessary comment on ethics.

Bonnie Stewart remarks in the comments on Siemen’s post that DeHay has “No understanding…”

I want to build on that point.

His lack of understanding is easy to illustrate. We can speculate about who was lurking and who was learning in this course but that is a waste of time. Better to focus on one learner to effectively comment on DeHay’s choices. We know AK was a learner present in the course.

What DeHay chose to do with this audience of learners was akin to a magician’s illusion. The magician captures your attention and maybe your trust in order to trick you and maybe violate your trust. AK, a learner, came to the course in order to engage with content and participants about the pedagogical shifts DeHay promised to “teach.” DeHay didn’t teach AK anything. He came to the course knowing full well the point that we think DeHay was trying to make about Coursera.

DeHay saw his role as a performer on the stage and doesn’t seem to know or care that he’d gained just a small amount of learner trust only to perform a stunt that was beneath them. If you read through AK’s blog or read his twitter feed, it takes about 3 minutes to know he would have catalyzed discourse in the course, stretched DeHay’s thinking and advanced the conversation about how teaching needs to change. It is a credit to AK, not DeHay, that he makes sense of this ill-conceived stunt and shares what took place. It shows that DeHay probably should have engaged AK instead of try to trick him. His failure to do so doesn’t reflect negatively on Coursera.

Maybe DeHay wasn’t an illusionist. Maybe he was a performance artist. He assembled learner collaborators and instead of collaborating and learning with them, he chose to take the stage and do something outlandish, like defecate.

Since I encountered this story through a networked connection I established in a MOOC I facilitate, I instinctively asked myself what would happen at #clmooc if we deleted all the content to cause chaos. This is such an outrageous hypothetical because we have a team of facilitators that is informed about our practices daily by engaged participants. If I impulsively deleted the content they would have it back up in minutes. If I suggested to them we should delete content, they would quickly reject that idea. The facilitators are teachers and we know what to do when learners assemble. We’re not pooping on stage or pulling a rabbit out of our hats. DeHay assembled learners by luring them to a chance at networked learning only to perform a weak illusion or nonsensical performance art. He chose to perform instead of collaborate. He didn’t make a point about Coursera and its ethics. He showed his lack of understanding about the real opportunities in front of us online that compel learners to convene.