A disruptive innovation of a sort which few
patrons as the new wonder kid on the education block while others dismiss it as
a momentary transaction, bound to die down its own death –
It is fondly called MOOC.
Massive Open Online Courses, as they are
termed and abbreviated as MOOCs are, simply put, online courses which follow
certain criteria –
- Free of cost
- Open access to everyone
- Aimed at bigger virtual classroom
MOOC can be understood as an innovative and
technology driven form of distance education.
Students can take these courses while they
are sitting in their homes or cyber cafés or schools through an interactive
online platform. Courses ranges from the ones designed for middle-school to
high-school and to even graduates in various streams like maths, science,
social science etc.
Completion of these courses does not warrants
for an academic degree, however, these courses most likely offer certificates
of commencements and excellence to the enrolled students who have completed all
formalities associated with these courses.
The courses for MOOCs are designed in such
a way that they deliver lectures in short, interactive video clips that allow
students to progress at their own pace through course materials. They also
offer live quizzes with instant feedback.
The term MOOC was first coined by Dave
Cormier who is Manager of Web Communication and Innovations at the University of Prince Edward Island.
MOOCs are very helpful for students who
cannot enrol in a formal education system, majorly due to expensive efforts,
for those who want an extra help in their studies and for those who want to
learn things in a more creative way.
However, there has been some major
criticisms of MOOCs also –
- · Half-baked sustainability model
- · Missing peer-to-peer communication and learning
- · Very low course completion rate with respect to enrollment rate.
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For Example, In a course taken
up by a teacher on an online platform garnered 53,205 students while only about
4.8% of the total strength could complete the course
This point to a number of flaws in the
model as mentioned in point one.
Since the cost to a MOOC is zero and commitment
level in the students is not checked or gauged at the time of enrollment, there
are a lot of insincere students who sign up for the course without being sure
of taking it.
However, many points that the online
discussion among the student committee is usually more knowledge-ful than the ‘package’
lectures.
Having mentioned some of the demerits of
MOOC, it still is a fair judgement that the idea is innovative and sustainable.
There is extensive work which is being done in this field and the future looks
bright for MOOC community and education system.
Please refer to following MOOC based sites for more information–
Cheers,
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