MOOCs-From Theory to Practice:The Technology Upheaval

Abstract

Over the past few years, Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) has been supplementing class room learning by renowned Professors worldwide, allowing students to have their doubts clarified and by providing different perspective of topics from several traditional subjects at the comfort of their desk. MOOCs has several objectives that include being open, participatory and distributary. The extent to which these objectives are reached is debatable.While resources are aplenty, thanks to the vision of the pioneers in education like the Cambridge, MIT and the Stanford University willing to open their gates to the world, proper direction, training and engagement are still required for most of the stakeholders to ensure effective utilization. Further,with the learning requirements having shifted from theory to practice, MOOCs has certainly taken a new direction. This of course is not without its own challenges. In this paper, we identify various challenges in present day MOOCs and the suggested countermeasures. While some of these have been identified recently, few more are based on our own practical experiences. A survey is also conducted to summarize learner's preferences, their willingness to adapt to new courses and their preparedness to deliver their own MOOCs courses. Results indicate that most learners prefer mixed courses that are a combination of Theory and Practice. Almost equal number of learners expressed interest in Industry relevant courses as those for Curriculum related courses. However, the preparedness of users in creating and delivering their own MOOCs courses is quite low, although vast majority are using MOOCs courses for their curriculum design, which is encouraging. We also suggest few methods and tools to enable teachers develop their own MOOC Courses.