2020 hasn’t been much favorable to any industry, expect for digital organizations which seem to be booming. Not just the commerce forefront, even education sector has realized the immense potential of online teaching, and is thus, finding new ways to become digitally fluent with offering a number of courses to the students.
With better telecommunications, speedy access to the internet and real-time query solving, has led to the emergence of a new type of school, making the brick-and-mortar structure seem irrelevant.
Distance Education isn’t looked as a less preferred option anymore. Automation and developments in education were something predicted more than a decade ago. And MOOC is just about the right way to head at it. Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) are one way of learning in a networked environment.
Registering yourself in a MOOC can help you gain information access to some of the best universities. They include access to video lessons, assessments, reading materials, and discussion forums. MOOCs can accommodate an unlimited number of learners from multiple locations, making it much larger than the traditional way of indulging in courses.
Also, unlike other learning management systems online, MOOC lays equal stress on student interactions. The knowledge transfer is believed to be both ways, through teachers and fellow mates, which is why interactions are necessitated through discussions, projects, and collaborations. Statistics show that in the past three years, over 25 million people have enrolled in Massive Open Online Courses. But questions regarding its credibility and the number of students actually completing the course has raised concerns.
Stern answers to all these questions were given by the MOOC proponents when they claimed that students opted for the course to gain knowledge and edification, and agreed that gaining credentials through MOOC was rather underutilized by the students.
Coming to the unsettling completion rates, which have risen to as high as 90%, even with the courses offered by prestigious MIT or Harvard; experts think it is not the right tangent to measure MOOC success.
Nina Huntemann, senior director of academics and research at edX, says a more credible indicator of success is the extent to which already engaged students find the course credible. “We don’t see completion rates being a goal,” she says. “People poke around to find parts of courses that help them, not necessarily every module.”
Besides now you have MOOC providing a continuous and flexible learning environment, where students can also access the course material for a prolonged period of time (even after the course is finished). These courses can be used for corporate trainings, topic-specific knowledge from top universities and industry leaders.
What About the Credibility Attached with a MOOC Certificate?
Another common question, answer to which is that MOOC do not bear the same weight as a college degree, but at the end of it, if you’ve learned to polish your skills through learning online and have applied them in projects, that is going to top any degree or college name attached to you.
If we had to distill the essence of what variates MOOC from a traditional course offered, it would be the flexibility it provides.
MOOCs are dynamic in their learning system that other formats lag on. And that can prove to be a greater advantage for people in the forthcoming time, who want to enhance their educational experiences, as per their interest and convenience.
