"MOOCs need to be more human-friendly, more accessible and valuable for learning”

Mike Sharples, Professor of Educational Technology at the Open University’s Institute for Educational Technology (UK), talked to us about the challenges posed by Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).
Mike Sharples is also the Academic Lead for FutureLearn, the first free, open, online platform for courses from multiple UK universities and other leading organisations. In this podcast interview with eLearningEuropa.info he talks about the challenges posed by MOOCs and how they may change the educational landscape.
“The educational landscape is very resistant to change. Universities have been around since mediaeval times, and it’s very difficult to change them”, says professor Sharples. However, he does believe MOOCs are going to bring a “radical change” to universities, due in fact to the increasing demand of new education opportunities in developing countries. “I think there is a huge opportunity there for MOOCs, not to replace universities, but to supplement them”, he says.
“Incredibly excited” with the “huge challenge and huge opportunity” he is currently facing leading the development of the highly-anticipated FutureLearn platform, something he says he has been waiting for his whole career as an expert in online education, Sharples points out that one of the main challenges of this endeavour is to make social learning massive”.
The key to make MOOCs “more human-friendly, more accessible and valuable for learning” is linking collaboration and conversation into content, bringing together “the best of online gaming techniques, online new media techniques and online learning techniques”. Website: FutureLearn. Read more...