Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)

CC – 8: Unit 4 / Sub-Unit (3)

Sem:4, Year:2020

By Dr. Arindam Bhattacharyya(bhatta.arin@gmail.com)

Asst. Prof. & HOD (Edu.) Serampore Girls’ College &

Guest Faculty of University of Calcutta, Edu. Dept.

MOOC: Concept & Definition

The word MOOC is ‘Massive Open Online Course’. An online

course which is Massive i.e. available to many, it is Open, implying it

is free of cost, it also implies there is no pre-requisite qualifications or

level of performance to join the course and participants can join

anytime and leave anytime. The term ‘Online’ means the course is

available digitally and that is why participants can access it from

anywhere. The term ‘Course’ indicates it has a structure, a syllabus, a

design. It provides participants an opportunity to join learning

community. The term MOOC has all these characteristics. MOOC’s

aims at a large-scale interactive participation of users with the help of

web. Various features of MOOC are like videos, study materials,

quizzes and online exams. and trying to make it more efficient than

traditional education system. The basic philosophy of MOOCs is

3A’s i.e., Anytime, Anyone, Anywhere. MOOC has no barriers of

economic, geographic, academic, age, and gender. The major English-

medium MOOC platform providers are Coursera, edX, Canvas and

FutureLearn;

MOOC: Concept & Definition Continued…Various Aspects of the Concept MOOC, Designed by Plourde (2013):

Historical Background of MOOC

The first large open online course recognised as a MOOC wasconceived by the University of Manitoba in 2008. Wide publicinterest in MOOCs followed later in 2011, with an open online coursein artificial intelligence by Stanford University and MassachusettsInstitute of Technology (MIT). This course attracted over 160000students from more than 190 countries. Two Stanford ComputerScience professors founded Coursera in 2012. In 2015 Courserawas the largest platform provider, with a third of all MOOC courseson offer. Many more Universities, Platforms, Subjects, Academicians,Participants joined the MOOC wagon in the year 2012. The NewYork Times announced 2012 as ‘the Year of the MOOC’. Now wecan say that after 2012-13, MOOCs started growing exponentially.

MiriadaX became the first non-United States MOOC provider tocross one (1) million registered users, tapping into the large Spanish-speaking market worldwide. The top three subject areas in 2013 and2014 were in the Humanities, Computer Science andProgramming, and Business and Management. In 2014, thenumber of Universities offering MOOCs doubled to 400 Universities.MHRD, India have also taken MOOCs seriously and a platform

‘SWAYAM’ (Study Webs of Active-Learning for Young AspiringMinds) has been launched on 2016.

Historical Background of MOOCKey Milestones in MOOCs Evolution (Misra, Muthirayan, & Kumar, 2017)

Why MOOC ?MOOC has following Importance:

Engagement: It is possible to engage with a large number ofstudents via discussion forums;

Re-Watchable: Students are able to watch and re-watch lecturevideos;

Scale: MOOCs are designed to reach a large number ofstudents;

Customised Learning Experience: Participants can learn attheir own pace and choose which material they engage with;

Educator Involvement: While educators are involved in thedesign and production of the MOOC;

Assessable: Most MOOCs include in-video, concept-checkquestions, with immediate feedback, as well as peer review;

For these reasons MOOCs are located in the important spaceof Curriculum;

Characteristics of MOOC

The Key Characteristics of a MOOC are:

a) Liberty of choice: MOOCs allow learners to choose where,

when, how, with whom and even what to learn;

b) Diversity: MOOCs get variety of learners from all corners

of the world and promote to diverse thinking & readings;

c) Connectedness: Through MOOCs, people are constantly

interact with each other and tried to knowledge building;

d) Self-paced: MOOC’s provide the Autonomy to Learners to decide

how and when they like to learn the MOOC’s contain documents;

e) Lifelong Learning: Learners improve their lifelong learning

skills, as participating in a MOOC;

f) Recognitions and Certificates: Most MOOCs award some

kind of recognition for successful completion of a course,

based on a final computer-marked assessment;

Categories/Types of MOOC

MOOCs Categorized into 2 Major Types: cMOOC & xMOOC

cMOOC: In a cMOOC environment the participants in the courseact as both teachers and students, sharing information and engagingin a joint teaching and learning experience through intense interactionfacilitated by technology. cMOOCs are not prescriptive, andparticipants set their own learning goals and type of engagement.cMOOC focuses on co-creation, autonomy, creativity and networkedlearning.

xMOOC: xMOOC is allowing learners to carry out learning athis/her pace. They focus on concise, targeted video content – withshort videos rather than full-length lectures to wade through – and useautomated testing to check students’ understanding as they workthrough the content. xMOOCs focus on imparting learning throughuse of traditional learning tools in structured manner able it at a scalewhich makes the course accessible to almost everyone connected tointernet. xMOOCs are imparting the existing knowledge to largeraudience who could possibly not have easy and cheap access to thesame earlier.

Categories/Types MOOC Continued…

There are exist other types of MOOCs, categorized on the basis of

pedagogy, number of students, type of content etc. [Check Web for Details]

a) Distributed Online Collaborative Courses (DOCC);

b) Big Open Online Courses (BOOC);

c) Synchronous Massive Online Courses (SMOC);

d) Small Private Online Courses (SPOC);

e) Corporate MOOCs;

f) Foreign Language Open Online Course (FLOOCs);

g) Nano Open Online Courses (NOOCs) MOOCs:

h) Transfer MOOCs;

i) Vocational Open Online Courses (VOOC);

j) Asynch MOOCs;

k) Adaptive MOOCs;

l) Blended MOOCs;

m) Micro Credentials MOOCs;

Advantages of MOOCs

Specific Advantages of MOOCs are given below:

a) Learner can use any online tool which are relevant for them;

b) Learning takes place in a more informal setting and it can be

organized easily;

c) The content to be shared can be easily modified based on the

context of the target audience;

d) Learner can connect across disciplines and corporate/

institutional walls. Actually, learners will improve their lifelong

learning skills, as participating in MOOCs;

e) Learner adds to learners’ personal learning environment

and/or network by participating in a MOOC;

f) Learner doesn’t need a degree to follow the MOOCs, only the

willingness to learn;

Advantages of MOOCs Continued…

g) There is no age bar. MOOC is an open course allowing

individuals of any age group to join the course;

h) MOOC also provides opportunities to many people who

could not continue education due to lack of money. Most of

the MOOC courses are either free or have nominal costs;

i) Enrolment of MOOCs is open to anybody in the World,

no fee, no age bar, no credentials needed;

j) MOOC can be organised in any language depending on the

main language of the target audience within any Country / State;

k) MOOCs are also being used for learning technical

subjects (such as Robotics, Programming, etc.);

l) MOOC saves on space and costs. Accommodating large

number of students in schools and colleges is not feasible;

MOOCs ParametersDifferent Parameters of MOOCs: C.P.I.

Course (C):

1. Paid (Nominal Costs);

2. Free (Absolute);

Pace (P):

1. Schedule Driven;

2. Self Paced;

Instructors (I):

1. University Courses;

2. Private Firms;

Challenges of MOOCs

MOOCs have been faced following New Challenges:

a) Access to Internet & Computer Literacy for MOOCs;

b) Accreditation of MOOCs;

c) Credibility in assessment of MOOCs;

d) Self Regulation and Motivation for MOOCs;

e) High Dropout Rate in MOOCs;

f) Maintain Standards and Quality of MOOCs;

g) Grading System of MOOCs;

h) Plagiarism free MOOCs;

Relevance of MOOCs in Indian ContextAccording to the Vision Paper of the Higher Education

Committee of FICCI, “the response of Indian students towardsMOOCs is positive and they stand second in the world in termsof enrolling to MOOCs. Hence, MOOCs are there to stay andrather grow in not only educating the adult learners but alsoK12 learners, parents’ guidance corporate training, soft skilldevelopment etc.”

Thus the Relevance of MOOCs in Indian Context:

Massive (M): Maximum number of learners that can enrolfrom each course, the large Indian population can benefit.

Open (O): MOOCs can serve as an effective tool todemocratize Indian education. It breaks all social, economicand geographical barriers like caste, creed, languages, andeducational backgrounds, social and economic status etc.MOOCs are the answer to India where 122 languages and 234mother tongues (Census, 2011) are spoken under 28 States and8 Union Territories.

Relevance of MOOCs in Indian Context Continued…

Online (O): MOOCs has ability to give equal opportunity toaccess knowledge breaking barriers of time, distance and eventhe financial barriers which is the largest barrier in Indiancontext.

Course (C): Looking at the array of various subjects that havealready been covered in various MOOCs, it can be inferred thatMOOCs can deliver any subject be it related to science,technology, religion, sociology, communication, etc.

MOOCs has Potential Value for Indian Higher Education:

According to press release by MHRD (2018), India: Hugenumber of users including students, teachers, professionals, sr.citizens, housewives etc. who have registered for variouscourses under SWAYAM. Over 100 Universities have comeforward in accepting credit transfer for courses done throughSWAYAM Platform. With ample thrust from the Government ofIndia, MOOCs have in fact penetrated education as well astraining at all levels in India.

Development of MOOCs in India

Brief History of Indian MOOCs:

The first MOOC experiments in India took place in

2012 with a course offered by Dr. Gautam Schroff of Tata

Consultancy Services (TCS) and an adjunct faculty at

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi. Also Larks

Learning (Downes 2012a) as well as Sunstone (Sunstone

Business School 2012) independently came up with the

first indigenous MOOCs in the private sector in 2012. IIT,

Kanpur developed an indigenously built mooKIT platform

in 2014; IIT BombayX, a customization of the open-source

edX platform, came up in 2014-15 and NPTEL content is

being delivered through Google Course builder since 2014.

The Swayam platform was inaugurated in July 2017.

MOOCs: National Coordinators in India

National MOOCs Coordinator Sectors

University Grants Commission

(UGC)

Non-Technology P.G. Degree Programs

NPTEL Technical / Engineering UG & PG degree

programs

Consortium for Educational

Communication (An IUC of UGC)

Non-Technology UG degree programs.

IGNOU Diplomas and Certificates

NCERT School Education from Class 9th to 12th.

NIOS School Education from Class 9th to 12th.

IIM Bangalore Management programs.

NITTR, Chennai Teacher Training programs.

For Successful Implement of MOOCs in India

Major 5 Steps for Indian H. E. Systems have been Introduced:

1. Overcoming the Constraints of Physical Infrastructure

and Teaching Resources;

2. Facilitating Movement towards ‘Open’-ness;

3. Promoting Development and Practice of Online and

Blended Pedagogy to Improve Quality and Scale within

the existing University System;

4. Better Recognition of Online Learning and even Online

Degrees;

5. Promoting International Marketing and Outreach of

Indian Universities and Institutions;

Recapitulation:

[ Recapitulate Yourself ]

* Concept & Definition of MOOC

* Historical Background of MOOC

* Importance of MOOC

* Characteristics of MOOC

* Categories or Types of MOOC

* Advantages of MOOCs

* Different Parameters of MOOCs

* Challenges of MOOCs

* Relevance of MOOCs in Indian Context

* Development of MOOCs in India

* National MOOCs Coordinator in India

* Successful Implementing Process of MOOCs in India

Have You Any / Many Qs./s.?