What is MOOC?

Dear readers,
Welcome back! Lat time I was talking about how to prepare teachers for digital education. This week I would like to talk about online learning.

Have you ever heard of MOOC? (http://mooc.org) MOOC (Massive open online course) is an online course aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the web. In addition to traditional course materials such as filmed lectures, readings, and problem sets, many MOOCs provide interactive user forums to support community interactions among students, professors, and teaching assistants.

I think MOOC is a good tool for researched development in distance education. Since it provides flexible and affordable way but high quality of education for students, future teachers and professors to learn new skills, pursue lifelong interests and deliver quality educational experiences at scale. Many top universities in the world, like Standard University, King's College, Harvard University, etc scrambled to join MOOC as the providers to establish online education service. In the past, you have to pay high tuition fee and living expenses to study abroad if you want to receive such a high-quality education. But now with the help of technology, you can save a lot. The most important requirement is that you're interested in learning for yourself. Since there's no teacher to monitor you or force you to take courses, you have to motivate yourself to learn.

Last time, my friend said that there is not much courses about digital teaching in her University. She is now worrying about whether she can handled the fast-growing digital education after graduation. Thus, I recommended this platform to her as it seems so helpful. She found that MOOC is very useful as they provide courses on various kind of topics, including Engineering, Biology and Life Sciences, Languages, Data Analysis, etc. The most helpful course she think is the course entitled Managing Technology & Innovation: How to deal with disruptive change provided by Rwth Aachen University in Germany. She leant how to lead an organization to success by anticipating and leveraging disruptive change brought about by technology and market trends. The causes guided her through the innovation process from ideation to implementation, as well as to explore the typical creation process of a new venture and learn more about the differences between entrepreneurial and managerial thought patterns. She said it is a new topic for her which is quite interesting.

All in all, MOOC is a convenient and useful educational platform for unlimited participation and open access through the internet. It can definitely help to prepare future teachers, as well as school teachers and professors to explore the world of digital education since the platform provides different useful courses. Besides, IT engineer, entrepreneur, educationalist, publishers and marketer can collaborate together to improve this educational perform and make it more popular to the the public.

What is your views toward MOOC? Do you like this educational platform? Feel free to share your ideas with me!