MOOCs are free online courses with open unlimited global enrollment to anyone who desires to learn, and regardless of their current educational level. In short MOOCs are structured courses through internet. MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Courses. You can follow the post “MOOC: Advantages and Disadvantages” to know the effect of MOOC on the current educational system.
Massive: Reflects the number of participants (large number) that can easily and simultaneously be engaged in the course.
Open: Related to several concepts. The software is open-source, registration is open to anyone, the curriculum is open, source of information is open, the assessment processes are open and the learners are open to a range of different learning environments.
Online Courses: Courses available Online.
Coursera, edX and Udacity are the three big MOOC providers.
The world is moving towards open education. In this scenario MOOC, a new dimension of educational opportunity opens up a method for innovative learning. This method of learning bring the instructors and students through out the world closer and closer through the virtual medium of internet. People are getting a common platform to share their ideas and work together. Institutes, instructors and students are able to collaborate among each other globally. MOOC facilitating a new path way for effective teaching and learning.
By Li Yuan and Stephen Powell have done their study on MOOC for higher education [1] and come up with the following four major component of MOOC.
(i) Open Curriculum: This is the best part of MOOC; encouraging “learn only that much what you need or like”. A MOOC course does not force you to complete all the covered topics or assignments. You can only go through the lectures and quizzes which you feel like important for you. This also facilitates a student to mix educational resources, activities, and/or packages for different disciplines to meet their needs. Hence the curriculum in MOOC is not a bounded one and is considered as open.
(ii) Open Learning: It provides a common area where the instructors, students and teaching assistants can share their ideas and can work cumulatively. It gives the opportunity for discussing, questioning and answering. This method of teaching and learning helps enhancing the understanding while making the learning process more interesting and effective.
(iii) Open Assessment: The assessment methods in MOOC are quite transparent and it also includes the peer review process in the evaluation process of the assessments. Most of the quizzes are machine generated multiple choice question banks. Once answered and submitted the machine evaluation of the quiz along with the proper explanation of the answers are provided. The explanatory questions are reviewed by multiple peer members and some times by the instructors.
(iv) Open Platform: This provides a learning platform which is open to all. Any one can get engaged and share their thoughts and ideas. As internet is open to all, a student or instructor sitting in any corner of the world can access the internet and can participate in the course.
Open education brings new opportunities for innovation in Higher Education that will not only support institutions to implement the fundamental values of university based education but it will also shift the focus from traditional lecturing to more learner centered learning in higher education [1].
MOOC courses provide variety of resources and methods for effective teaching and learning process. Following are the inclusions in a MOOC course: Video & Slide Lecturers, Quizzes (Automatic Machine Assessment), Assignments (Peer Reviews and Evaluation), Surveys (Pre Course and Post Course Surveys), Discussion Forum, Meetups and Hangouts and Feedbacks. All these cover a wide range of requirements for better and easily accessible education.
Figure on right column shows a statistical bar chart result, collected from a survey conducted in the year 2013. This has been collected from a European educational website [2]. This clearly shows that contribution of MOOC in “Science & Technology” stream is the highest. So from the first rising growth of MOOC, we can easily interpret that it is going to take an important role in higher technical education in near future.
It is true that it is difficult to provide higher education through MOOC in the branch of studies like Civil, Mechanical and Electrical as these need a lot of practical exposure on field for better understanding of the subject and its really tough to provide these kind of exposure online. But for the study of Computer Science, Electronics and Embedded Systems, Mathematics etc. have found enough scope through MOOC.
The rising availability of internet at every corner of the world has ramped up the MOOC education in few recent years. Of course the introduction of additional tools like Google hangout and others are adding flavor to the MOOC studies. Hence, the way MOOC is gaining its popularity among the students and instructors, the day is no far when a student can choose a particular subject from a particular university of his/her choice and can earn a mixed university degree while enjoying the full class environment virtually, sitting in the home.
If you need any more information regarding MOOC education, feel free to drop a comment and IgEn will definitely respond to it. We would appreciate if you can give valuable information and suggestions to the other students who need it under this post.
References:
[1] By Li Yuan and Stephen Powell, “MOOCs and Open Education: Implicationsfor Higher Education”, JISC Cetis, Centre for Educational Technology & Interoperability Standards.
[2] http://www.openeducationeuropa.eu/en/european_scoreboard_moocs