Generating Lifelong-Learning Communities and Branding with Massive Open Online Courses

2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 27-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosana Montes ◽  
Miguel Gea ◽  
Roberto Bergaz ◽  
Belén Rojas

The arrival of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) has stimulated teachers and universities to change in some ways the teaching methodologies. The success of these massive courses is based on involving students to acquire knowledge and skills in a wider community by learning from others and using active learning practices. MOOC providers also help universities to support the mission of transferring knowledge to society in any kind of area, supporting lifelong learning and adopting some kind of internationalization strategy. This is an ongoing trend where 17 of top 30 universities in the world's adopted MOOC courses. Open learning is a strategic and valuable trend in knowledge society. Opportunities appear in the Anglo and Latin American market, while problems associated with the high drop-out rate, the sustainability, and the feasibility of skill certification should be addressed. In this paper we analyze the properties of a MOOC as a learning community by taking data from a pilot of three MOOC courses performed at AbiertaUGR, the MOOC platform of the University of Granada.

Author(s):  
Enrique Mu

Until recently, there was no doubt about what constituted a university education and how it was carried out. Suddenly, the COVID-19 pandemic occurred, and in a few weeks, not only education, but the entire world changed. In the new normal, post-pandemic world, it is possible that teaching face-to-face courses will be the exception, not the rule, in the U.S. and the Latin American and Caribbean regions. Furthermore, this virtual instruction will possibly be at massive levels with tens or hundreds of thousands of students at a time, modeled after massive open online courses (MOOCs).


The diffusion of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) is significantly changing the way people learn and update their knowledge and competencies. Although the benefits characterizing MOOCs, which leverage on free and open access to know-how and digitized materials, there are some challenges which call for improving and enhancing the existing methods and approaches for MOOCs design. By combining theory and practice, this paper presents a process of MOOCs design based on a double-loop phase of evaluation. Specifically, the paper provides evidences on how to take advantage of the learners’ and teachers’ feedback to redesign or rethink the course’s architecture, and especially the storyboard and blueprint. A pilot application of the proposed approach has been made to design a course dealing with entrepreneurship domain, and in particular with crowdfunding. The results of the application are presented to validate the approach and provide teachers and course’s designers with some recommendations.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel A. Jaramillo-Morillo ◽  
José A. Ruipérez-Valiente ◽  
Mario F. Solarte Sarasty ◽  
Gustavo A. Ramírez-González

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been transitioning slowly from being completely open and without clear recognition in universities or industry, to private settings through the emergence of Small and Massive Private Online Courses (SPOCs and MPOCs). Courses in these new formats are often for credit and have clear market value through the acquisition of competencies and skills. However, the endemic issue of academic dishonesty remains lingering and generating untrustworthiness regarding what students did to complete these courses. In this case study, we focus on SPOCs with academic recognition developed at the University of Cauca in Colombia and hosted in their Open edX instance called Selene Unicauca. We have developed a learning analytics algorithm to detect dishonest students based on submission time and exam responses providing as output a number of indicators that can be easily used to identify students. Our results in two SPOCs suggest that 17% of the students that interacted enough with the courses have performed academic dishonest actions, and that 100% of the students that were dishonest passed the courses, compared to 62% for the rest of students. Contrary to what other studies have found, in this study, dishonest students were similarly or even more active with the courseware than the rest, and we hypothesize that these might be working groups taking the course seriously and solving exams together to achieve a higher grade. With MOOC-based degrees and SPOCs for credit becoming the norm in distance learning, we believe that if this issue is not tackled properly, it might endanger the future of the reliability and value of online learning credentials.


Author(s):  
Jorge León Martínez ◽  
Edith Tapia Rangel

<p>Para promover el aprendizaje a lo largo de la vida, la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) a través de la Coordinación de Universidad Abierta y Educación a Distancia (CUAED) ha desarrollado cursos autogestivos de corta duración, expresados en lenguaje sencillo, que permiten a gran parte de la población adquirir conocimientos, habilidades y actitudes para resolver problemáticas cotidianas. Estos cursos se basan en las características de los Cursos Masivos Abiertos en Línea (MOOC por sus siglas en inglés: Massive Open Online Courses) y los denominamos l3-MOOC (Lifelong Learning-MOOC).</p>


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (24) ◽  
pp. 6910 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julio Ruiz-Palmero ◽  
Daniel López-Álvarez ◽  
Enrique Sánchez-Rivas ◽  
José Sánchez-Rodríguez

The study aims to learn more about the profiles of students who attended several Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) at the University of Málaga (Málaga, Spain) and their opinion about them. The results of this study are based on a survey conducted by the students who completed the courses. The number of men and women as a whole is similar, although significant differences can be observed depending on the subject matter of the courses, which is also the case with the age of the students. The data revealed that 80% have university studies and 60% were working. The students in the sample learned about MOOCs mainly from other people (friends, social media, etc.) and showed a high level of satisfaction with them. It is significant that 99.4% would take another MOOC or that 97.9% would recommend it to a friend, colleague, or family member.


Author(s):  
Jeffrey Harris ◽  
William Heikoop ◽  
Allison Van Beek ◽  
James S. Wallace

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) allow anyone in the public to learn from professors at universities across the world. An internet connection is the only requirement to participate in a MOOC. In engineering, the majority of MOOCs are targeted at self-learners, and consequently most courses are based on introductory undergraduate courses. The University of Toronto offered its first advanced engineering MOOC entitled, “Wind, Waves & Tides” based on a mixed fourth-year undergraduate and graduate level course. A total of 11,723 students registered in the course, and 617 students completed the course in its entirety. The following paper describes the experience of teaching a niche interest MOOC and the lessons learned throughout the endeavour.


2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (11) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanne Wacher Kjærgaard ◽  
Lars Peter Bech Kjeldsen ◽  
Vibe Alopaeus Jelsbak ◽  
Thomas Bendsen

I en tid, hvor økonomien er under pres i den danske uddannelsessektor, og hvor ønsket om rationalisering af undervisningen går hånd i hånd med et ønske om øget kvalitet gennem yderligere digitalisering, bliver spørgsmålet om inddragelse af MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) interessant. En MOOC er et gratis kursustilbud uden adgangsbegrænsning og uden begrænsning i deltagerantal. Litteraturen (Barbour, 2012; Kim, 2012) viser, at flere universiteter relativt hovedkulds, og måske mest af frygt for ikke at få en central placering i kapløbet om de internationale studerende, har kastet sig over denne uddannelses- og kursusform. Som et bidrag til en kvalificeret drøftelse af perspektiverne for MOOCs i UC-sektoren beskriver denne artikel fænomenet og diskuterer læringsmæssige perspektiver rettet mod det globale marked for uddannelse. Målet er gennem et litteratur-review og erfaringer fra deltagelse i et antal MOOCs at afdække, hvad det kræver at udbyde en MOOC, hvad andre har gjort, hvem der udbyder, hvem der deltager, og hvilke perspektiver der kunne være for de nordiske lande.Abstract in EnglishDue to an increasing financial pressure in the Danish educational sector and a demand for rationalization as well as higher quality through digitization, the question of whether or not to adopt MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) becomes interesting. A MOOC is a free, online course offered to all with no entry level demands and with no limitation on participant numbers. Studies (Barbour, 2012; Kim, 2012) show that several universities have plunged into this type of courses relatively headlong, perhaps mainly driven by fear of losing out in the competition for international students.  With the intention of contributing to an informed discussion of the university college perspectives of MOOCs, this article describes the phenomenon and discusses its peda-gogical perspectives in the context of the global education market. Through a literature review as well as hands-on participation in a number of MOOCs, the aim is to uncover what it takes to offer a MOOC, what others have done, who the providers are, who the participants are, and what perspectives MOOCs might hold in a Scandinavian context.


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