Exploring New Approaches towards Open Online Courses

By Li Yuan, Stephen Powell, Hongliang Ma. Designing Learning for the 21st Century (DL21C) is an online course developed by collaboration between a UK and Chinese University to explore new approaches for open learning courses, and the key attributes of Massive Open Online Courses.
A primary motivation for this project included the exploration of business models, this is essential if long-term viability of new approaches and courses are to be assured. From a pedagogical design perspective, the motivation was to create interactive, responsive and pedagogically effective on-line and blended learning, freely available as an open educational resource (OER).  A particular challenge was how to make the course developed culturally, linguistically and pedagogically useful in different languages, cultural contexts and educational settings.   
The rapid expansion of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) has sparked great interests about their potential to disrupt the higher education system and the provision of open online courses as strategic choices for the future in institutions. The course developed by the team fulfills the criteria of a MOOC in that it was online and free to access, although in practice the only students registered with the Chinese university participated and were awarded credit. Download Complete Text.