UnisaOpen MOOCs

Measuring the success of scaleable open online courses

This subject guide serves as a point of departure in finding information on MOOCs as well as providing further avenues for self-exploration. It is a work in progress as the contents will change as new resources are added or removed. You are encouraged to make suggestions for content to be added or removed.

"MOOC's have attracted huge attention, and hype, for supporting massive enrollments and for being free. What has received less attention is the pedagogical aspects of MOOCs. How can MOOCs effectively teach thousands of students simultaneously?"

"By creating an event like a MOOC we are potentially radically redefining what it means to be an educator. We are very much at the beginning stages of our learning how to create the space required for community to develop and grow in an open course. These field notes speak to the my own journey in the design of 'Rhizomatic Learning - the community is the curriculum'. They are, in effect, a journey towards planned obsolescence."

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) represent a recent stage in open education. In more and more institutions they are moving from an early entrepreneurial stage into the reality. The rapidly rising participation levels, high visibility and a growing community worldwide prompt a number of important questions. The MOOC Quality Project, an initiative of the European Foundation for Quality in E-Learning (EFQUEL), addresses the question of quality and MOOCs, not by trying to addresses the question of quality and MOOCs, not by trying to find one answer which fits all, but by trying to stimulate a discourse on the issue of quality in MOOCs. A series of blogposts by eleven worldwide experts and stakeholders in the field addressed the issues from each participant's viewpoint. From twelve experts' blog contributions key quality areas were identified by way of document analysis, amongst which were addressing a massive (and often unspecified) target group, mixing formal and informal learners, learning across contexts, transparency and openness, peer-to-peer pedagogy, choice-based learning and learner support.

In this paper we report on the development of the OpenupEd Quality Label, a self-assessment and review quality assurance process for the new European OpenupEd portal (www.openuped.eu) for MOOCs (massive open online courses). This process is focused on benchmark statements that seek to capture good practice, both at the level of the institution and at the level of individual courses. The benchmark statements for MOOCs are derived from benchmarks produced by the E‑xcellence e‑learning quality projects (E‑xcellencelabel.eadtu.eu/). A process of self-assessment and review is intended to encourage quality enhancement, captured in an action plan. We suggest that a quality label for MOOCs will benefit all MOOC stakeholders.

This paper considers the pedagogies associated with different types of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). It argues that the current discourse around the concept of xMOOCs (primarily based around interaction with content and essentially adopting a behaviourist learning approach), and cMOOCs (which focus on harnessing the power of social media and interaction with peers, adopting a connectivist learning approach), is an inadequate way of describing the variety of MOOCs and the ways in which learners engage with them. It will provide a brief history of the emergence of MOOCs and the key stakeholders. It will introduce an alternative means of categorising MOOCs, based on their key characteristics. It will then describe the 7Cs of Learning Design framework, which can be used to design more pedagogically informed MOOCs, which enhances the learner experience and ensure quality assurance.

Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, have become a global phenomenon. Tens of thousands of people have enrolled into free online courses provided by some of the world's most prestigious universities. As they are such a recent creation, discussion about the value and the operation of MOOCs has been predominately in the general media and academic blogosphere. Many of those who have been pontificating about the good (or evil) of MOOCs have been doing so without having experienced one as a participant or organiser. This paper investigates the views of academics who participated as students in a MOOC. A survey and follow up focus group of academics are used to discuss the pedagogical design and also the broader implications that MOOCs have for the tertiary education sector.

The paper deals with necessary requirements to implement MOOCs at European universities, by the example of Austria. As the respective general conditions and business environments are obviously different from the university system in the United States the analysis of advantages and obstacles of offering MOOCs is done from a local point of view including lecturers' and students' perspectives as well as necessary preconditions that have to be established by the universities and the government. Thereby, challenges in the fields of content creation, the supply of MOOCs, the assessment of knowledge and the development of business models are pointed out and discussed.

Harvard open courses at Harvard Extension School Videos for the following free Harvard courses are made available by the Harvard Extension School's Open Learning Initiative. Featuring Harvard faculty, the noncredit courses are open to the public. You do not need to register to view the lecture videos.

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