By Pawan Agarwal. Online courses may help alleviate faculty shortages and improve education. Digital technologies have the potential to dramatically transform Indian higher education. A new model built around massive open online courses (MOOCs) that are developed locally and combined with those provided by top universities abroad could deliver higher education on a scale and at a quality not possible before.  University enrollment in India is huge and growing. It surpassed the U.S.'s enrollment in 2010 and became second only to China that year. Every day in India 5,000 students enroll at a university and 10 new institutions open their doors. More...

By Navleen. What are MOOCs? 
MOOCs stand for Massive Open Online Courses. The idea behind the concept of MOOCs is that these are ‘Courses’, related to practically any topic, are offered ‘Online’, and are free and ‘Open’ for anyone to enroll into. So, an ideal MOOC would have unlimited number of enrolls, hence making it ‘Massive’!
What exactly is meant by Open Access? 
Open access refers to the unrestricted provision of access to educational resources, free of cost. MOOC content is usually open for all, and there is no registration or fee required to enroll for one either. A web browser is all one requires to have Open Access.
Is there a limit on the number of participants in a MOOC? 
No, there is no limit to the number of participants in a MOOC. A typical MOOC is designed to take on board millions of students and learners. More...

By Santosh Bhaskar. Flipped Classroom model is an inverted and technologically advanced form of the traditional teaching method, where the lessons are watched at home and later discussed/clarified along with the homework  in the presence of a teacher. It allows teachers to deliver instructions online and to become a facilitator during class hours.
The main motto behind flipping a classroom is to provide students with sufficient time to work on what really matters. In this model, teachers need to create effective lesson contents for students. Nowadays’ educational technology helps educators by saving their precious effort and time. Administrators, Educators & Decision makers are trying to find the best online resources which enhance students’ learning. The best solution is to engage the students with MOOCs ( Massive Open Online Courses). MOOCs are the standard lectures uploaded online by professors and educators. In this article, we let you know how MOOCs help educators in flipping their classroom. Read more...

By David F. Carr. Freely downloadable textbooks and other open educational resources (OERs) are starting to have a practical impact, saving college students millions of dollars even as advocates struggle to distinguish the OER movement from the rise of the massive open online courses (MOOCs).
By the standards of OER, the MOOCs distributed by the commercial operations Coursera and Udacity as well as the non-profit edX are only partly open. I'll come back to this distinction later. When I moderated a panel discussion on OER last week at the Distance Teaching and Learning Conference held at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, MOOCs were a side issue, but an important one. Read more...

Posted by Matthew Wood. MOOCs are on the Move: A Snapshot of the Rapid Growth of MOOCs
A White Paper by Dr Lindsay Ryan - January 2013
What are MOOCs
MOOCs are Massive Open Online Courses and they are rapidly changing the game for higher education, executive education and employee development generally. MOOCs offer free online courses covering a growing range of topics delivered by qualified lecturers from some of the most well-known universities in the world. In this age of lifelong learning, MOOCs are a means of providing learning and development to virtually everyone, anytime, anywhere in the world with internet access.
This paper presents a snapshot of current developments in MOOCs, noting that MOOCs have really only gathered momentum in the past year and are constantly developing and evolving almost on a weekly basis.
Background
The original concept for a MOOC came from academic research in the early 1960s with the idea that people could be linked by a series of computers to listen, discuss and learn about a particular topic. Now, continuous development in technology has become the enabler for virtually everybody in the world to have access to a broad and diverse range of education and learning topics.
MOOCs provide free online courses that enable people with an interest in a selected topic to study and learn through interaction with others also interested in the same topic. Other participants could be from the same organisation, city or region, learning together with people from other organisations, cities, regions and countries from around the world. MOOCs are the internet equivalent of distance education and there could be 1,000 or 100,000 participants in a single course. Read more...

By Jonathan Rees.
Dear Stephen:
It’s really nice of you to have linked to my last post just as I’m sorta- kinda- trying to move beyond MOOC commentary, as I still remember our last discussion near the beginning of my long run of MOOC posts. Besides making me look up who you actually are, I’m afraid the rather blatant hostility you showed to faculty in those comments soured me on MOOCs of all kinds, including the better ones that you’ve been working on. I should have been more open-minded about what you and George Siemens have been trying to do. As I wrote with respect to George a little while back, “anybody whose ideas got mugged by a bunch of Clayton Christensen acolytes automatically has my sympathy.” That goes for you too.
As I’ve learned more about this subject, I’ve come to realize that my problem with MOOCs isn’t really the MOOCs themselves, it’s with the power dynamic behind the way in which they’ve been championed and implemented (at least in the United States). For lack of better term, the MOOC “brand” has been weaponized and that’s given your original idea a bad name that it doesn’t deserve. Read more...

By Jonathan Rees. Silly me. When George Siemens wrote that “Critiquing MOOCs is now more fashionable than advocating for them,” I didn’t believe him. When the nice people at Slate gave me space in their online magazine to stir up trouble, I figured it was just because trouble attracts attention. But now I’m thinking I’ve been reading the tea leaves totally wrong. Forbes – Forbes! – , the same magazine that published a particular vicious attack on my Slate article that I won’t link to, has published another contributor’s essay to which I will. It’s entitled, “MOOCs are Toast or at Least Should Be.” Here’s my favorite part:

Many in corporate America have been watching the MOOC phenomenon in academia to see if these massive open online courses hold any promise for executive education. Obviously, I think there are opportunities for corporations in the online learning space, but not as MOOC providers. I believe MOOCs will soon be viewed for what they are, a futile experiment.

This comes on top of a Wired Campus post last week declaring “The MOOC ‘Revolution’ May Not Be as Disruptive as Some Had Imagined,” and a Harvard dude in a piece I read this morning pronouncing that we’re “already in a post-MOOC era.” Read more...

By Pam Jones. The New York Times dubbed 2012 'The Year of the MOOC,'[i] and it has since become one of the hottest topics in education. An idea pioneered by the higher education sector in the US, MOOCs take open learning to a new level. There are several providers associated with top universities who are paving the way, such as Udacity, Coursera, and edX.
What is a MOOC?

• Stands for a Massive Open Online Course
• An online course aimed at large-scale participation and open access via the internet
• Similar to university courses, but do not tend to offer academic credit
• There are no entry requirements and courses are free
• MOOCs are delivered via a number of web-based platforms in a wide range of subjects
• Learners interact with instructors and fellow participants in online forums

Key benefits of MOOCs
Like any form of elearning, a key advantage of MOOCs over traditional classroom-based learning is their convenience. MOOCs offer self-paced learning with interactive instructor and peer support through online social platforms. Read more...

To MOOCers and shakers in the world of higher education, the question about MOOCs now is not merely “to MOOC or not to MOOC”, but “how to MOOC strategically” when more and more universities are jumping onto the bandwagon of MOOCs. This month, the two major MOOC providers Coursera and edX both announced that they have successfully attracted many more institutions to partner with them. Coursera, in addition, has partnered with several major publishers, such as Macmillan Higher Education, SAGE and Oxford University Press, to provide teaching and learning materials to the students at no cost.
MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Courses. The massive coverage of discussions about MOOCs in the media, both pros and cons (see ACA Newsletter - Education Europe, February 2013), have convinced both enthusiasts and sceptics in the world of higher education that MOOCs, like global university rankings, are “here to stay”. More and more universities, including Yale University, which have been hesitant to join the MOOC race, are compelled to MOOC along with their peers.
Believe it or not, MOOCs are all over the place, in the newspapers, in conferences, and even in university board meetings. According to a Gallup survey and some follow-up enquiries conducted by Inside Higher Ed, US university presidents are under increasing pressure to look into the impact of MOOCs on their “business model”. However, most of the presidents are sceptical about the potential of MOOCs in improving the learning of all students or solving colleges’ financial challenges, as opposed to the trustees from the business world who are keen to rush into the MOOC race.
On the other hand, some MOOC optimists continue to test the water. Georgia Institute of Technology, partnering with AT&T and Udacity Inc. (a private MOOC provider), has just announced a plan to offer a fee-paying MOOC master’s degree programme. Students formally “admitted” to the programme will pay a fraction (approx. USD 7 000 / EUR 5 500) of the tuition fee of the same on-campus offer to complete the programme online in roughly three years. The business model is built on a multi-track system, allowing all the learners to take the courses for free, while charging some others based on the credentials they desire to obtain. In other words, the students pay for the degree or credits rather than the content that they obtain online.
In the current MOOC race, the spotlight has been following the speed rather than the best. Being the first is all that matters to make a splash in the media. The rules of the game may soon change, however, with more MOOC players, including platforms and content-providers from all around the world, going into the field. By that time, perhaps it would not be a big surprise to see university rankers stepping into the scene to bring some order to the chaos. After all, global university rankings and MOOCs (in their current state) have involved more or less the same group of flagship universities, whereas MOOCs seem to provide exactly the missing indicators of “teaching quality” and “community engagement” that rankers have been searching for years.
The future is difficult to predict. What is sure to happen on 10 October 2013 is ACA’s next policy seminar on MOOCs. Save the date and come MOOC with us.

EdX

Coursera

Georgia Institute of Technology 

Inside Higher Ed

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