The Growth Of Massive Open Online Course (MOOCs)

Massive open online courses or MOOCs
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Introduction

Massive open online courses or MOOCs term was first coined by David Cormier in a meeting and introduced in 2008 when it was decided 25 regular students will be moved online to extend the teaching. In educational trends, it is a buzzword, where some researchers refer to MOOCs as the tsunami that challenges the traditional way of teaching in the mid of fear being a replacement. 

MOOC development is based on the philosophy that learning happens through networks. The availability of the MOOC has been expanding rapidly. According to the report of the Chancellor of the University of Southern California, the institute is able to generate $114 million per year. In Fact, many researchers believed in the next 5- 10 years, online courses will have more learners adhere combination of physical and theoretical courses offered by universities(ModorIntelligence. 2020). In 2012, the University of Frankfurt ran the first MOOC in Germany. The makers ensured the participation will be free of charge and all interesting applications will be admitted. At the first session, lectures were given online for one hour with subsequent discussion. Later and sooner MOOCs expand exponentially and will continue to have a huge impact on students. 

MOOC Beginning

Since the industrial revolution has demanded the qualified manpower working the factories, Thishas led to the growth of extinct term correspondence courses. However, these courses don’t meet the massive requirements of the population. And that requirement was supported by the emergence of electronic channels such as the internet, radio and television. These media enables to carry the learning to the masses even those people can be accessed the education from geographical regions. But in the whole course, what is still lacked is nothing but the interaction between student and teacher, which was taken by e-learning courses aid by the internet. This gives rise to online courses that we accessing today. Only those people who have access to the internet, computer and mobile phone can access e-learning.

Early in the 1960s people has seen the rise of open universities change the learning face. According to assignment helpers the institution not only provides correspondence courses, broadcasting and publishing at the regional and national level even adopted an open policy. In today’s time’s open universities also provides online courses to learners working in different geographical regions. 

Things moved faster and paved a way for the development of MOOC in the year 2008 launched by Stephen Downes and George Siemens called Connectivism and Connective Knowledge/2008 (CCK8). MOOC uses several ways to including forums and blogs to engage the learners. Later in the year 2012, Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig a Stanford professor formulated open and free courses on introduction to artificial intelligence. As we have discussed above this course have received registration of more than 160000 students across 160 countries ultimately lead to Novig and Udang to develop audacity through open online courses. Today a majority of start-up models have come into existence including the famous Coursera (McKay, 2015). 

 In the present scenario, MOOCs have come very far. 2012 called the year of the MOOC which means MOOC are not only provided by the only institution even it is being supported by both teachers and even individuals. Currently, there are many MOOC platforms are available offering different courses. Credibility, open resources, certification have made the MOOC quite popular to date.  To know more take assistance from assignment writers of SourceEssay.

Different Types of MOOCs

Arya, 2019 classified different types of MOOCs – cMOOCs and xMOOCs. cMOOC called as connective MOOC based on the connectivist theory of education where participants share their views and resources on a particular topic and send it to the instructor. Some categories of MOOCs did not belong to the cMOOC and upgraded based on the requirements. In MOOC learners are actively encouraged to share their ideas on the different topics using personal interaction with social media. Haber, 2013 explained cMOOC doesn’t run on a single platform primarily here the participants will act and both learners and educators. However, cMOOC is not a central repository of knowledge primary expanding the knowledge connecting diverse learners.

cMOOC- Technical Requirements

The technical requirements of cMOOC ranging from the kind of program supported by students, what slides organizers used to create the attentive chapters, or how they can access the lesion. Thereby the technical requirements of cMOOCs are-

  • A wiki course on the project website providing information about general issues
  • A course blog motivating students to provide additional input to the tutors
  • Moodle forum to run common discussion
  • Pageflakes
  • Elluminate a group video conferencing tool
  • Ustream contribution live streaming
  • Twitter to meet the requirements of identify tags
  • gRSSHopper harvesting content from RSS feed
  • Language translation software and Microphones

The other type of xMOOC is extended massive online courses and online assignment help services lied upon traditional university courses. It would significantly broaden the student’s exposure to varied institutional courses. However, critics said, xMOOCs are inferior to university courses because it eliminates the students and teaches attraction.  

Comparison of xMOOC and cMOOC  

According to the Laser, 2015 report, almost all the courses provide by Coursera were belonging to distinct categories that lead to 1.5 million active users. It does provide a platform to 33 institutes including the University of Pennsylvania. Coursera provides ample experiences to both faculties and teachers in terms of working with numerous educational communities. This is merely an example of how assessments and lots of experiences provided by xMOOC bring out effective outcomes. When we talked about xMOOC, it is covering more and more topics every day. xMOOC is based on the traditional way of classroom learning combined with pre-recorded lectures with quizzes, tests and other assessments. George Siemens put a difference succinctly and referred cMOOCs generates the knowledge and creation whereas xMOOCs are cantered towards the professors rather than students. Again we can’t deny the fact that cMOOCs based on the idea that learning will be happening in the network contributes to the formation of different learning communities and construct knowledge.   

Contemporary Education With MOOC

A large number of institutions and companies are ventured into the field of MOOCs more specifically provide an open way to access education. This makes it possible for the learners to acquire knowledge without participating in the classroom. Learners get benefitted while sitting at their homes also doesn’t require compulsory grades. 

Many essay helper has accepted the driving force increasing the MOOCs popularity align government initiative and teachers action supported the programme. For instance, UAE facilitates UAE Centennial Plan 2021 full vision programs extended to over decades after 2021 state has prioritized the education for all the citizens. On a large scale, MOOC provides vendors with an opportunity related to advancing science, technology, health engineering and space industry to invest in this field. In order to meet the UAE vision called for shifting the diversified economy meant to reinforce the knowledge through quality tech medium. 

In contemporary education, there are many academic areas are included in the MOOC, but the prior one is-

Social networking and collaborative learning

E pedagogy

Emerging technology environment

Designing and training

Integrating HCI in the classroom

Synchronous and Asynchronous Learning

In past decades, the number of UK, USA, UAE and other countries has opened a number of the door for students. However, MOOCs require much self-regulated learning and learners have to find their way to started learning with course material (Inchiparamban and Pingle, 2016). Online courses and assignment help needed support from the intermediaries who run the traditional way of education in the past.

The Rise of Massive Open Online Courses

The global MOOC valued at USD 6845.4 million in 2020, which is further expected to increase by USD 18925.18 million by 2026 with an estimated CAGR 32.8% amid 2020 to 2026. MOOCs is the final stage of the online course as it enables the institution to offer public program courses to all the student who is working in different regions. 

The MOOCs availability expanding rapidly. As per the University of California, currently, the institution generated around 114 million dollars. Despite that class central review in the seventh year, the MOOC movement has crossed 100 million learners pointing ultimate last model. 

Similarly as per the US news reports approximately 22 out of 25 universities are offered online courses, however developing countries are still slow to catch up with the increased movement of MOOCs. In Australia, MOOC has become a central part of the university curriculum expected to boost learning. A platform such as SWAYAM offers 115 engineering courses and 108 science course online. 

As per the various industry experts, the most common degree provided by the MOOC platform are information technology, data science, cybersecurity and combine both IT and Cybersecurity. Another stance of popularity can be measure by Georgia Tech’s online master’s degree in computer science (OMSCS) course offers by Udacity that has 9000 students. 

Source- The globalwire.com report 2020

Benefits Of MOOC

MOOC is becoming popular day by day because it offers tremendous facilities, several benefits in regards to accessibility, lifelong learning opportunity, increasing students potential. It is free and available to learners at lower or even free of cost easily accessible because of the flow of the internet. Being online, it offers numerous online courses having the highest cutoff and needed to pass the marking list. Amid it doesn’t demand any form of additional resources and educational items. Additionally, MOOCs are great medium ensuring continuity of learning. According to the mezzomedia report, 44% people uses social media and 43.6% people uses online learning portal in South Korea to access the knowledge. Similar edx announced the global initiative to help the universities and institutions facing challenges in executing the MOOCs. It tries to offer access to expertise and tool using the university can produce the semester plan when a vast university is likely to be closed or open. Since the pandemic surge up and countries are trying the overcome the effects of Covid infection, many universities shut down and moved towards the MOOC. In 2020 Coursera making the entire courses catalogue free to universities countering the disruption to sudden pandemic invasion. To know more, get free assistance from the online essay help team of SourceEssay.

Challenges

In a highly changing society, the biggest challenges MOOC faces is none other than high drop rates. Even though the number of enrollment would be higher initially but it drops down slowly and merely 50% of the students ably complete the course time. Another challenge MOOC faces are successful integration of instruction with the classroom also coordinating the video making. Consequently, MOOC is the replica to acquire knowledge from anywhere but it is still unable to fulfill the requirements of a traditional classroom(Abedi and Beikverdi, 2012). At last, many industries that don’t recognize the credential acquired from the MOOC platform also become an obstruction in terms of getting placement. As a working professional, MOOC requires constant attention from the teachers. The instructor needs to upgrade their skills and must know how to spread the knowledge and helps the students in terms of professional development. 

Conclusion

MOOC is a highly evolved technology and buzzword in contemporary society because of digitization. MOOC are not only provided by institution even it is being supported by both teachers and even individuals. Currently, there are many MOOC platforms are available offering different courses subjected to Credibility, open resources, certification made the MOOC quite popular to date. As MOOCs run online it tends to offer numerous online courses having the highest cutoff required to pass the marking list also it doesn’t demand any form of additional resources and education it which makes it great medium ensuring continuity of learning. Therefore we can conclude many countries after considering the population of learners are emphasizing learning through online mediums. Henceforth the time comes when everyone should understand the effective motive of MOOC and everyone should come in front to support this technology running it efficiently.

References

Arya, U., 2017. The Rise of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) and Other Similar Online Courses Variants–Analysis of Textual Incidences in Cyberspace. Journal of Content, Community, pp.26-33.

Abedi, M. and Beikverdi, A., 2012, December. Rise of massive open online courses. In 2012 4th International Congress on Engineering Education (pp. 1-4). IEEE.

Inchiparamban, S. and Pingle, S., 2016. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs): Why Do We Need Them?. Online Submission.

Laaser, wolfram,. 2015. The rise and fall of the “Massively Open Online Courses”. South Eastern European Journal of Public Health. 3. 10.4119/UNIBI/SEEJPH-2015-57.

ModorIntelligence. 2020.MASSIVE OPEN ONLINE COURSE (MOOC) MARKET – GROWTH, TRENDS, COVID-19 IMPACT, AND FORECASTS (2021 – 2026). Available at- https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/massive-open-online-course-mooc-market

Data accessed on 1 July 2021

McKay, E. ed., 2015. Macro-Level Learning through Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs): Strategies and Predictions for the Future: Strategies and Predictions for the Future. IGI Global.

Researchand Market.com. 2019. GCC Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Market Report 2021 – Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts to 2026 – ResearchAndMarkets.com. Available at- https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210422005521/en/GCC-Massive-Open-Online-Course-MOOC-Market-Report-2021—Growth-Trends-COVID-19-Impact-and-Forecasts-to-2026—ResearchAndMarkets.com

Reportand Data.com 2015.Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) Market By Component (Platforms And Services), By Provider Type (Private Company, University, Government), By Subject Type, End-Users, And Segment Forecasts By Region, To 2017-2027. Available at- https://www.reportsanddata.com/report-detail/massive-online-open-course-mooc-market

Data accessed on 1 July 2021

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