The last two decades have witnessed a growing debate about what constitutes appropriate sources of knowledge in education institutions. Technological advances and global shifts over this period have produced significant changes to disciplinary and interdisciplinary forms and to the practices of knowledge development and exchange (Yates 2012, Yates and Young 2010). Some theorists have interpreted these changes as a destabilizing of traditional disciplinary hierarchies and norms and criticised the extrinsic forms which now govern curriculum and pedagogy, which they see as producing greater superficiality (for example Young 2012, Muller 2012, Moore 2012). Others, in contrast, have highlighted the advances enabled by the changing and more fluid spatialization that is core to knowledge in new times (for example Peters 2007, Peters and Roberts 2012, Land 2011). The first view sees the privileging of disciplinary foundations as vital to the development of new knowledge and creativity, while the second suggests the openness afforded by the architecture of the internet creates the potential for new forms of social knowledge production outside the confines of disciplinary frameworks. 

Alongside these debates, higher education institutions have been struggling with what their programs should look like, what aspects of past forms of disciplinary organisation remain relevant, what needs to be done differently to prepare for a rapidly changing world, and how or if new technologies should be incorporated (Yates 2012). These questions are brought to sharp focus by a recent development in online learning, the rise of the global Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) phenomenon. The implications of this phenomenon and the ways in which it is disrupting traditional university curricula are of high salience for universities globally, and for Europe in particular. This paper takes up the questions about forms of knowledge and the MOOCs phenomenon by an examination of the initial stages of three different approaches to online learning being taken up at three Australian universities. It explores the ways and extent to which these initiatives interpret disciplinarity as necessary or marginal to creativity and the building of new knowledge. 

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