William Cope
Helen Repp.png "Rita van Haren")
Rita van Haren
Nadia Ayub
Micheal M Van Wyk
Clifford Blizard
Mellissa Rosal EspirituUbiquitous Learning and Instructional Technologies MOOC’s Updates
How MOOCs are Making a Difference to Modern Learning?
1. What are MOOCs?
According to the website mooc.org, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are free online courses available for anyone to enrol. MOOCs provide an affordable and flexible way to learn new skills, advance your career and deliver quality educational experiences at scale.
There could be a variety of interpretations for the name MOOC. Especially after years’ of development over e-learning, what the four letters could have represented also evolves.
A good example of MOOCs is Coursera, which has now developed into a mature platform collaborating with world's leading tertiary education providers and provided open education resources to learners across the world like me.
2. How MOOCs Change the Way of Learning?
Compared with traditional teaching/learning method, MOOCs targe at unlimited participation on the internet so that there is no physical restriction for students worldwide to take part in the teaching/learning activities.
On the one hand, it facilitates the convenience of learning despite location or time, which opens up education access. Everyone across the world gets a chance to learn the same course provided by first-class universities such as the Harvard University, without paying a cent.
On the other hand, it renders learning experience more engaging. Students could get more peer support with a platform to share their viewpoints of the course contents. Also, the course instructor could get feedback more easily than usual with the convenience brought by the technology-enhanced learning experience.
Very well put. I wonder how life would have been different if during our K-12 schooling we had the opportunity to be a part of the world schooling, where courses from schools across the world could have been accessible to us and enriched our education.