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E-skills for Libraries and Learning Services E-skills |
MOOCs
What is it?
Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are free web based open access online courses aimed at large-scale participation.
Educational Advantages:
- flexibility
- interactive learning
- creates an online ‘community’ for participants (students, lecturers, tutors)
- enables large-scale participation.
Generally students completing a MOOC course do not receive credit. Universities work with educational technology companies such as Coursera, Udacity and edX to create MOOCs.
Examples:
- Check out Udacity and Coursera to see some of the institutions offering MOOCs.
- #ETMOOC - educational technology and media MOOC course http://etmooc.org/
- The California Institute of Technology “Learning from Data” http://work.caltech.edu/telecourse.html
- MOOCs and Libraries – from the OCLC research channel http://www.youtube.com/playlist?feature=edit_ok&list=PLLB61wwipFoYfpA0rSB86XRnqL92Rkv8u.
Video 
Have a go!
In pairs/rows, discuss the following questions. Enter key points from your discussion in the box below and click submit.
- What are some of the challenges of MOOCs? What opportunities or challenges do you think MOOCs will have on libraries?
- Have a look at the courses offered via Coursera - https://www.coursera.org/#courses.
Note down some of the Universities using MOOCs and the courses offered.