Perhaps it may be soon to claim that the current trends in open online
learning; MOOC movement will revolutionize higher education but, there is no
doubt that it is here to go. However, the history of MOOC dates back to 2007
and 2008 with the works of some Canadian educators such as Downes, Siemens,
Couros, Cormier and Wiley in US by offering open online courses (open
education, PLENK, CCK, EC&I which I have explained in previous posts) but there
have been a lot of conversations around the topic and the implications for
online education since its boom in 2011.Nowadays, the word of MOOC has spread more and there are many initiatives in cooperation with prestigious universities and higher education institutions in different forms to offer open online courses for instance: Stanford online courses, MITx, edX, Google MOOC, Udacity, Coursera etc.
Although, yet there is no common definition and understanding of MOOC and the way it is practiced. For example some people make distinction between connectivist MOOCs (c-MOOCs: e.g. PLENK, CCK) and other types of MOOCs (x-MOOCs e.g. Coursera, edX) in how they are run and financed. See this post by George Siemens for more explanations. Whatever the forms and approaches to MOOC are, the big question is that how they will transform current practices and traditions of universities and what they can really offer? Is it a promising transformation in education or just hype?
Here are some resources related to MOOCs and online courses:
-
Stephen Downes and George Siemens pioneers in
MOOC have created mooc.ca
as a portal to center their activities about MOOC. Here Downes also has put
some resources to find
open online courses.
-
What
is necessary and what is contingent in MOOC design presentation by George
Roberts et al. 'Conventional'
online universities consider strategic response to MOOCs Inside Higher Ed
