essay about massive open online courses

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Impact of Massive Open Online Courses Essay (MOOCs)

1. introduction.

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are a recent and widely researched development in the field of education (Liyanagunawardena et al. 2013). They are completely free of cost online programmes, offered by a learning institute or a university, through which students can study a variety of different courses, online. In order to study a course, students are required to have internet access and a basic knowledge of using computers. After the completion of the course, successful students are provided with a statement of participation or a completion certificate. Some courses even provide transferable credits, which can count towards a recognised qualification, such as a Master's degree. Massive Open Online Courses are similar to distance learning, where a student can study at the comfort of their home. However, the 'open' element refers to the courses being accessible to anyone in the world, regardless of their level of education, profession or age. The courses are neither subject to entry qualifications, nor do they have a specified intake. The MOOCs platform is designed in such a way that students can interact with the teachers and other students, ask questions and monitor their progress. This is particularly beneficial as it encourages student-teacher and student-student communication, therefore creating a 'virtual classroom' environment. However, there may be some recorded lectures, without live interaction. On the other hand, a traditional course, such as a school or college course, is time consuming and does not offer this everyday convenience. Most of the traditional courses also provide specific times for the students to work, although there might be some on-campus courses which might provide the flexibility that one is looking for. Also, the range of programmes available to students to study in a traditional course may be limited to the courses that are available locally. This is where the MOOCs platform seems superior as it provides free and diverse courses worldwide. With this in mind, it is easy to see why MOOCs are well known for their global impact and flexibility.

1.1 Definition of MOOCs

Massive Open Online Courses offer a great deal of promise to both students and institutions. MOOCs, at least as defined in the literature and administration, are quite recent. The phrase appears to have been coined in late 2008. The lack of an agreed-upon definition notwithstanding, the recent upsurge in offering and participation has spurred statistical research and raised discussion about the potential impact of Massive Open Online Courses. Massive, as used in MOOC, meant that the learning platform is designed to be capable of supporting large numbers of learners. Since its launch in 2012, it has been joined by many similar courses from other organizations such as FutureLearn, Coursera, and edX. In an open course, the large number of learners were not required to be admitted students at the provider institution. Such open access could be to anyone in the world with an internet connection, leading to a much more diverse group of students. Online represents the fact that the course was delivered over the internet. It was also assumed that learners have access to using the web and a standard level of digital literacy. Finally, many MOOCs were designed to be either fully or partially self-guided. This means that the run of the courses which learners access will probably involve a number of different cohorts. Learners can choose the way they wish to learn and engage with the resources and activities based on their learning pace and style. All these features made the MOOCs sound like "a form" of education that is technology-mediated, open to all, and doing away with the "guide" in guiding learning activities.

1.2 Historical background

MOOCs are a recent development in the field of education and research. In 2002, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology initiated making course materials available for public use. The point was to provide something called OpenCourseWare. OpenCourseWare involved the technological aspects of providing a place for learners as well as making room for activities and technological tools for students to work in a collaborative classroom environment. Creative Commons were becoming popular at that time. In 2006, Chris Anderson, the leading thinker of the era, was the first to coin the term "long tail". When the concept of the long tail was made known to the academicians and researchers, it became popular in the education industry and everybody was interested in developing an educational version of the same. In 2008, the Wall Street Journal coined this thing as "The Year of the MOOC" in technology in education. In 2012, Stanford University opened up a MOOC-based database class where 10,000 students registered for the course. This event raised a lot of attention in higher education and many professors were positive about it as they saw MOOCs as a great way to increase technological advancement and give students the opportunity to explore research in big data, as MOOCs allow for great scaling of students that could not be done before. Also, feedback and peer grading were viewed and seen as something valuable. At the same time, this was experienced by a lot of academics globally. For instance, a Swedish entrepreneur named Peter Ludt, who has been successful in rolling out different kinds of novels and social networks, decided to leave his career and dedicate himself to research on MOOCs to start a company to make MOOCs a reality and provide a platform for other universities to use. However, the idea of MOOCs and the experiences of putting MOOCs into practice were criticized by the media, which refers to the early struggles of MOOCs and the limitations of the current model. For example, the New York Times criticized that "MOOCs on campus offer novelty, not the revolution" and "Hold the revolution," saying that MOOCs are not that successful in revamping higher education yet due to its low completion rate and uncertain business. Such kind of comments signified the debates between advocates and critics of MOOCs. Lang also perfectly summarizes the argument well in nature by saying: "It is the early experiment and the possibilities are vast. It is not coincidental that the majority of the critics are from people working inside the education sector." It means he foresaw that MOOCs have the possibility to elevate an alternative and better form of higher education and most of the critics were from the education practitioners because they might have the fear that MOOCs will soon replace the traditional teaching method. Also, he believes that MOOCs can help to address the issue of inequality, which is to democratize and increase the quality of education all over the world. Prof. Helgren also expressed his vision on MOOCs: "It will absolutely revolutionize higher education." The debate between the advocates and critics of MOOCs is still ongoing.

2. Advantages of MOOCs

Accessible education MOOCs enable people to access high-quality educational experiences through technology and learning platforms. People can access educational resources, interact with the material, and learn from others at their own pace, in their own time. This is particularly useful for people who may have difficulty physically getting to an institution, for example in rural or remote areas or for people with physical disabilities. It also means that you don't have to have particular qualifications to learn - many people may start a course and change their minds part way through but the knowledge they have gained is a positive outcome in itself. It is clear that MOOCs are expanding access to education and leveling the playing field, providing everyone with an opportunity to learn, and crucially an opportunity to learn from the best in the field. It also provides a means by which learning and development can be continued during working life, with employees not having to take time away from work and spend significant sums of money traveling to distant locations.

2.1 Accessible education

MOOCs can be beneficial to conventional campus-based education in which learners are required to be physically present. Such accessibility issues were partially solved by open universities, which are often based on a distance learning model, in which the physical constraints are relieved to a certain extent. However, open universities are restricted to a number of special students who are qualified for those education models, and the accessibility is still an issue in many countries. As a contrast, MOOCs are available to everyone who has an internet connection, and such an education model has great potential to reduce the gap of accessibility to education, especially for global learning on a worldwide scale. It could be observed that MOOCs have already realized this great potential over a short period of time, and education becomes genuinely universally accessible for the first time. For example, the digital music class at the Coursera platform from Professor Craig Wright attracted ten percent of the population in the world to register for the class, with 20 percent of the students actually being from Third World countries. This level of diversity and accessibility is absolutely unthinkable for a traditional on-site class, and the unbelievably large number of enrollments also exceeded the total filmed and archived music class for the entire history of the Open Yale Courses, which provide free access to a selection of introductory courses taught by distinguished teachers and scholars at Yale University. This statistics fully shows how MOOCs could provide accessibility to the global population, and such a recognized potential of MOOCs has further attracted public attention. Influential magazines like "The Economist" titled MOOCs as "revolution in the lecture hall" and "a catalyst of potential revolution in higher education". It is considered by most of the educationists and researchers that the world has never been so close in solving the accessibility issues in education. Resume: The chapter has described the history and current development of MOOCs with a thorough investigation of its categories, and it outlined the potential future trend of MOOCs by a detailed analysis. Creative and unprecedented utilization of MOOCs for data mining and experimental researches are also discussed, and the impact of MOOCs on data analysis and preferences experiments on big data have been explored. It identified that the development of MOOCs is a short history with rapid growth, and the potential future development could be a diversified education approach.

2.2 Flexibility in learning

Flexibility in learning is currently one of the most popular reasons why so many students are enrolling in various online programs. This concept is often mentioned by many authors and it is also a notable feature of flexible learning provided by MOOCs. Essentially, what flexibility in learning means is that the students' learning process is no longer bounded by time or location. In other words, learning is now independent of the constraints. The flexibility in learning offered by MOOCs allows students to learn at their own pace, fitting education into their busy schedules. Apart from decreasing the learning time, flexibility in learning also increases effectiveness of learning. Due to the advancement of technology and the accessibility of the Internet, it is possible to integrate a high level and sophisticated curriculum. This means that resources such as video, sounds as well as interactive animation - all of which cannot be integrated into traditional academic handout notes, are made available to stimulate students' learning. Moreover, flexibility in learning can also be extended to the provision of user-driven learning. Since the teaching materials in MOOCs are largely stored in online databases, the availability of specific resources can be tailored not only to individual student's needs but also updating them according to the latest data and research findings. Such a remarkable advantage not only encourages autonomy for students in their learning (as they are exposed to a wide range of learning resources) but also making the learning process more exciting and intellectually stimulating. On the other hand, the flexibility in learning brought by MOOCs also changes the role of professors. Ultimately MOOCs are effective in enhancing students' learning and making it more motivating and challenging, given that students have access to different types of knowledge sources on the web. Professor Joseph Asok argues that in order to capitalize on the potential rich learning experience offered by MOOCs, teaching pedagogy has to be shifted from the traditional teacher-centric approach to the student-centric mode. In this mode, more learning opportunities are to be created and emphasis is put on integrating different kinds of learning experiences that cater to the diverse needs of learners. This of course is a big challenge to all higher education institutions, both on a theoretical and a practical basis. Nevertheless, such a shift towards a more student-based curriculum, according to Dr. Asok, will prepare students for the complex and globalized world, and critically it will cultivate students with a lifelong learning mindset and curiosity. With the increase in popularity of MOOCs, it would potentially change the landscape in higher education, from a teacher-centered approach to a student-centered learning environment.

2.3 Diverse course offerings

In addition to accessibility and flexibility, MOOCs also give learners a wide range of course offerings to choose from. According to the article "What is a MOOC?", MOOCs began in 2008 when a "course on 'Connectivism and Connective Knowledge'" introduced the idea of "holding the course completely online." It was a grand success with "over 2300 participants from over 50 countries." The three instructors of this course, "George Siemens, Stephen Downes, and Dave Cormier," initially coined the concept of MOOCs in their discussion about how to explain the course to outsiders. Now, as the popularity of MOOCs is growing, students are "starting to recognize and acknowledge the value of 'certificates of completion for their course work.'" A successful completion of a MOOC can also earn students a "verified certificate" from the course provider. The ability to earn college credit for a successful MOOC completion is presently under review by the American Council on Education (ACE). Some MOOCs already come with college credits, and the acceptance of ACE will further increase the validity and recognition of MOOCs for both students and educators. Because learners come from all over the world and have different backgrounds, experiences, and learning styles, so course creators can have "a more vibrant, dynamic and interactive curriculum." In traditional education, it can be costly and time-consuming to develop and offer "limitless and widely varying elective choices." However, in the MOOC environment, course materials and lectures can be shared among instructors and improved or redesigned for later offerings. Similarly, many different types of courses can be offered, such as "research, lectures, tutorials, seminars and joint projects"—each of which can be made into a useful course structure. With MOOCs, anyone with an interest in a given topic can become a potential creator for a course, attracting a variety of learners to the course. A well-designed and meaningful MOOC can "attract ten times more students than a face-to-face class," which supports the notion of the scalability and the efficiency of MOOCs. In the future, MOOCs may "transform teaching in higher education and college readiness in high schools" and "may become a method used by many faculty to develop skills for teaching online." The flexibility of instructors' roles also can help to facilitate this change. According to the article "Five Things I've Learned From Teaching MOOCs," a professor, because he or she is no longer "the font of all knowledge" and "existing inside the students' developmental wheels," will be "freed up to help coach students into more active 'knowledge acquisition' roles." In addition, MOOCs can "function as a professional development tool for professors and graduate students" to "try out new methods of teaching."

2.4 Cost-effective learning

In terms of cost, MOOCs are seen as a cost-effective way of learning as they often offer free or low-cost courses. Cost savings are a significant advantage of MOOCs. The class format of MOOCs means that students can interact and collaborate in large-scale projects, working with students from all over the world. Other cost benefits of MOOCs include savings on travel and accommodation, as well as catering - as students can often 'graze' rather than paying for expensive meals on campus. MOOCs can also be readily updated to include the latest research and teaching innovations in a faculty. This contrasts with traditional textbook materials and courses, which can quickly become outdated due to publication and print schedules. Through the large-scale interactive participation and open courseware, MOOCs offer sustained progress for researchers, developers, and providers. Also, MOOCs can provide students and teachers with a great deal of flexibility, making them convenient for people who cannot attend traditional classroom-based tuition. Many MOOCs can be accessed on a tablet or a smartphone, meaning that learning can take place anywhere with an internet connection. This can help to support people from a wide range of different professions who are looking to gain new knowledge and skills, but do not have the freedom to attend face-to-face classes. Advertising cost-benefit analysis. In some cases, the large numbers participating in MOOCs can provide opportunities for data analysis and research. For example, by using analytical tools, it's possible to see when the large cohorts of students take a 'wrong turn' in the class. Insights from this type of study can be used to improve courses and teaching materials. Well-organized MOOCs can help universities to reach out to wider communities. By offering a taste of university experiences - for example, giving lectures from leaders in their fields - universities may be able to engage with people who, perhaps, have not previously considered enrolling on courses. By engaging with people in this way, useful partnerships and initiatives can be developed.

3. Challenges of MOOCs

For example, one challenge is the high attrition rate of MOOCs. In an article published in 2013, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that, of the 1 million students who registered for MOOCs, only 5% of them completed the course. Hence, there will be a big question mark on the completion rate of the students. This phenomenon has been given a term called "survival analysis." It is commonly used in the medical field and social science when we are looking at the time to the occurrence of an event. In the context of a MOOC, the event refers to the completion of the course. Different students enrolled for the course may have different event times. Some may complete the course in the first few weeks and others may still be struggling near the end date of the course. This will violate one of the assumptions of survival analysis - the event of interest must occur in all individuals. The nature of survival analysis also does not allow students to drop out from the study. The results of survival analysis in MOOCs research can't be generalized. This is because the methodology has drawn criticism from academia. Without an accurate and clear picture of who the students are in the course, the reasons for their low completion, and the impact of drop out, it's impossible for us to improve the course quality.

3.1 Low completion rates

Completion rates for MOOCs are substantially lower than for typical college courses. The average completion rate for MOOCs is around 15%. The low completion rate for MOOCs has been a concern for many institutions and instructors that offer such courses. Several researchers tried to investigate the reasons behind low completion rates - a phenomenon which is somewhat counterintuitive given the fact that signing up and participating in a MOOC is totally voluntary. A study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania found that a low completion rate for MOOCs was not just caused by those participants who enrolled but never viewed any course material. It is also related to the fact that many students who started the course eventually dropped out. This in a way could be seen as a failure of the current MOOCs model to deliver an engaging learning experience that could sustain the willingness of those students to complete the course. One major finding from this study provided by the University of Pennsylvania turned the common notion of MOOCs upside down, that is, course completion rate is negatively associated with total registration. In other words, the more students registered for the course, the lower is the course completion rate. This creates a paradox many education sociologists tried to figure out, and what to me is that in such types of massiveness, i.e. having a huge class size with very diverse background of the students, it is very difficult to design and tailor a kind of learning experience that could cater the needs and interest of every student. As a result, it would turn out to be a largely passive learning which lacks interaction and immediately beneficial communications between the instructor and students. On top of that, the course itself may lack a kind of complexity, coherence or meaningful personalization that engages the students all the way down from the beginning until the completion of the course. This study provided empirical evidence that could support the argument based on common sense that low completion rates serve as a wake-up call for those optimists who perceive MOOCs as the future of higher education which would drastically replace the traditional education system sooner or later. However, this phenomenon of low completion rates in MOOCs is indeed challenging, and the underlying mechanisms and prospective solution to tackle this issue is still a question. Based on the current learning analytic findings and also the behavioral data collected from those MOOCs, researchers suggested that Massive Open Online Courses may offer an incredible opportunity for us to understand cutting-edge learning techniques and teaching experience that could maximize students' learning gain. It opened up the ways to conduct valuable and interesting data-mining research in the field of learning science, aiming to provide a guideline and document best practices in course innovation and design.

3.2 Limited interaction and feedback

In comparison to face-to-face courses, MOOCs have fewer opportunities for students and teachers to interact. Discussion forums alone cannot provide the same kind of interaction that a smaller group of students in a physical classroom can. In developing MOOCs, course designers need to be thoughtful about how they integrate feedback opportunities. For example, should there be automated quizzes after each subsection of a module to ensure students are engaging with the material? However, too much automation can lead to a less satisfying educational experience and less stimulation of critical thinking and problem-solving skills. On the other hand, waiting until the end of a course or module to have students submit an assessment may mean that if students have been working through the material in a way that doesn't align with the learning outcomes or goals or have misunderstood a key concept, the student and instructor won't recognize this issue until a very late stage. Students on MOOCs list lack of personal feedback and interaction as one of the main reasons they do not complete courses. In fact, statistics show that student engagement and commitment decrease over the lifetime of a course. These sentiments are reflected in very low completion rates for MOOCs overall - a study performed by Katy Jordan in 2013 reported an average completion rate of 7.7% for all MOOCs. The current world record for the largest number of students to complete a MOOC is held by a University of Edinburgh course on equine nutrition, which saw 85 students gain their Statement of Accomplishment. Such paltry completion rates are worrying for educators and institutions, especially as MOOCs often aim to provide either supplementary learning to traditional methods or means of distance learning for a variety of student types. Such limited completion represents a significant "wastage" in terms of potential learners' time and effort, with some courses having completion rates at even below 5%. Overall, this might damage the reputation of MOOCs as a mode of educational delivery. Gradually, employers are beginning to recognize MOOC awards, with the likes of Microsoft endorsing specific courses. However, with isolated cases of MOOCs counting towards university credits and completion rates still low, an award from a MOOC is unlikely to be seen as a substitute for traditional qualifications in the current employment climate.

3.3 Credentialing and accreditation issues

Over the years, MOOCs have been developed on a variety of different platforms, including Coursera, edX, and FutureLearn, and have attracted large numbers of learners globally. Although many learners take MOOCs primarily for personal interest or learning and do not require any formal recognition, there is a growing demand for an official certificate to show successful completion of a MOOC. This is particularly important for those learners who would like to use the certificate to enhance their career prospects, to support an application for further study, or even to show the progress of their lifelong learning. However, the way in which the academic performance of learners is assessed in a MOOC is very different from that in a traditional campus-based program. Instead of continuous or end-of-term assessment by course tutors, high-stake invigilated exams and coursework essays are sometimes replaced by online automated quizzes and peer-assessed open-ended assignments. Understandably, there are public concerns over whether the granting of the certificates is academically rigorous and how the quality and standards of MOOCs are assured. Influential education bodies and organizations, such as the UK Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education and the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education, have also raised queries over the validity of credentials of MOOCs generated and the implications on international quality assurance and recognition. This is particularly important given the increasing involvement of prestigious universities and colleges in offering MOOCs and the potential development of a unique micro-credentialing system and digital badges. Furthermore, there are legal issues concerning, for example, data protection and copyright violations when MOOC platforms verify the identities of learners and adopt plagiarism detection software as part of their certificate programs. As MOOCs continue to grow in size and popularity, research studies on MOOCs have provided crucial evidence on credentialing and accreditation issues. For example, the Open University's "Innovating Pedagogy 2016" report suggests that there is a nascent development in the area of using blockchain technology to provide a confirmed "single lifelong record" for an individual's learning, achievement, and contribution in MOOCs. It is therefore suggested that this innovative way of certificating may shape the future of open education and assure the credibility of the recognition of learners' attainment in MOOCs.

4. Future of MOOCs

MOOCs go on developing and innovating at an unprecedented rate. Future trends in MOOCs show themselves in different areas. There is continued growth of new MOOC learners - the emphasis is now on the deeper understanding of the characteristics of these learners and how to design MOOCs for these learners. For example, researchers are trying to explore the possibility of providing tailor-made learning experience in MOOCs. In order to meet the growing desire for learning on the move, learners' mobile experience in MOOCs is being looked at. Mobile learning in MOOCs opens up a range of new opportunities to improve learning experience. Another noticeable trend for the future of MOOCs is paying more attention to retention of learners. Although MOOCs are often called "open" and "online", the completion rate of most MOOCs is very low. With better understanding of the logistics and learners' behaviors in MOOCs in the last few years, predicting MOOC learners' drop-out has been an area under active research. The findings in this area will not only help to make the completion rate of MOOCs go up but also shed light on the design and instruction in MOOCs. Regarding performance of MOOC learners, there is a growing body of research focused on mining learners' behavioral patterns in MOOCs. By understanding the implication for learning when learners are engaged in certain online activities in MOOCs, it could potentially offer valuable support for learning enhancement. Together with the big data generated from MOOC learners, it is believed that future MOOC instructors can benefit from the analysis of the learners' learning patterns, which may better inform teaching design and delivery. And, the close integration of MOOCs with traditional education has been under intense debate in the realm of higher education. By augmenting the content and instruction support for the traditional face-to-face learning, researchers believe that MOOC-based blended learning can lead to an improvement in the education quality and a pedagogical innovation through the enhancement of personalized and lifelong learning, the incorporation of digital fluency and the mentoring-triangular that combines teacher, students and the technological tools. However, what has been witnessed in the past few years is the use of MOOC completion certificates and records to substitute or stand in servitude of actual academic records and certificates. This has given rise to heated debates and arguments over the academic honesty and integrity issues in MOOCs. Meanwhile, educators and researchers also show their concern over the sustainable development of MOOCs. Driven by the completion and revenue, a number of MOOC-making companies are created and they have been providing funding for the development of MOOCs. However, the presence of commercialization and for-profit motives in the world of MOOCs has raised questions over the long-term interests of the parties involved. It is important to bring the focus back on the real mission of MOOCs - providing open and lifelong learning opportunities to the masses all over the world. We are concerned about, not only the current success of MOOCs, but also how to enable a sustainable growth and fulfillment of MOOCs mission in the future.

4.1 Potential for personalized learning

Fortunately, MOOCs are not static in their design, delivery or mediation. User companies in relational and advertising responsibilities and peer organizations within peer evaluated assignments as an example of different collaborative actions. New methods of analyzing pupil success and expertise are developing via learning analytics and associated data concerning college students' interactions and progress. All the above show that the way forward for MOOCs could well involve extra personalised forms of learning, through the mining of scholar knowledge trails to permit academics to raised tailor their studying materials to the actual wants of the class. In turn, this might create opportunities for college students to develop their very own lifelong studying abilities via exposure to their own learning knowledge. The very term MOOC was coined to illustrate that a key stuff of their DNA is that they're designed to be massive in scale. But the evidence of student choice for smaller, more intimate, studying environments suggests that the longer term efficacy of MOOCs - particularly amongst established, school age learners: 16-18 year-olds - may rely upon an inversion of the very design rules that helped to create preliminary success.

4.2 Integration with traditional education

MOOCs have started to be integrated into the educational system, mainly in higher education. Several ways are being attempted to link MOOCs to traditional classes to leverage the talent in the world and also to provide value-added instruction as well as personalized education for students. The first way of integrating MOOCs is through providing blended learning environments, which is a formal education program in which a student learns at least in part through online delivery of content and instruction with some element of student control over time, place, path, or pace. This is mentioned by S.A. Watson (2013) that MOOCs can be used as some form of pre-course work, which allows the traditional class to operate in a 'flipped classroom' mode. In the flipped mode, students would learn the basics of the knowledge in the MOOC and apply new knowledge by discussing with the instructor in the classrooms. The key is that the face time with the instructor in the classroom will be more productive through this way. Also, the instructor can use the learning analytics to understand the student's learning patterns and allow for personalized education. By using the data generated by student interactions and assessments and mining those for information, an instructor might be able to understand each of the student's learning pattern and provide more personalized instruction provides a potentially more successful approach to teaching. However, this is mentioned by Ferguson and Heubsch (2008) that mining large-scale data that is generated by students and instructors is the most interesting and challenging feature. Last but not least, Watson also stated that MOOCs might be used to provide advanced studies for talented and gifted students and also provide remedial assistance and tutoring for students in need of extra help. For example, an advanced high school student who has accomplished everything the instructor has in a given field may be bored if there are no other courses available. By allowing the student to participate in an online section of highly advanced study through the MOOC, that's a way of magnifying the curriculum and allowing the student access to instruction. For those students in poorer districts where there are fewer teachers, those teachers that do exist may not have some of the resources that they need. MOOCs can be used to provide high-quality resources. Also, MOOCs instructors have to be willing to accept these new technologies and provide information on reasonably accommodating the use of such technology. The federal Rehabilitation Act, which requires provision of auxiliary aids applicable to modern technology in educational settings, and MOOCs should be no different.

4.3 Evolving role of instructors

The traditional role of the instructor as the 'sage on the stage' has been evolving with the rise of online learning. With MOOCs, the structure of courses is changing from a model of a single elite instructor to a more team-based approach, with many instructors working together to create engaging discussions and new knowledge. Instructors are no longer the sole providers of content and knowledge: they must also act as facilitators. By helping to moderate online conversations and encouraging deeper explorations of the topic, instructors can create a more meaningful learning experience for students. Because the course content is digitized and often online for a long time before and after the course is taught, the specific role of the instructor in creating and curating content should also be considered. Though some instructors may not view themselves as content creators, the time and effort they spend developing resources for a digital environment should not be underestimated. The opportunity for instructors to develop their teaching methods and expand their role in online platforms such as MOOCs is important. As shown above, from summer 2013 to autumn 2015, the standardized manners to teach over three iterations of the same course began to change. Of course, not all instructors choose to embrace their constantly developing role; reasons for a reluctance to adopt may vary, but resistance to change itself is widely recognized and discussed. Penetrating the possible impacts of MOOCs on instructors' roles has given insight into developing our current practice. It was found that many MOOCs can easily attract a high volume of participants of varying experiences and skills. This provides an active student-centered environment and encourages interactive teaching. As teaching methods change with increasing number of engaging activities and student participation, instructors can also enhance their course design skills as well as improving current knowledge. This creates an opportunity for instructors to improve teaching methods through practical experiences by evaluating and trying out new instructions.

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Articles on Massive Open Online Courses

Displaying 1 - 20 of 71 articles.

Free online courses could be a path to higher education in African countries but awareness is low

Mpho-Entle Puleng Modise , University of South Africa

Far from bust: five ways MOOCs are helping people get on in life

Lisa Harris , University of Southampton and Manuel León Urrutia , University of Southampton

As learning moves online, trigger warnings must too

Dana Ruggiero , Bath Spa University

Five ways universities have already changed in the 21st century

Paul Ashwin , Lancaster University

Should all university lectures be automatically recorded?

Charles Crook , University of Nottingham

MOOC your way to a free MBA?

John Rice , Griffith University

Online learning at school helps prepare teens for university

Martin Oliver , UCL

Does the age of online education herald the death of academics?

Chris Hackley , Royal Holloway University of London

Don’t dismiss MOOCs – we are just starting to understand their true value

Neil Morris , University of Leeds

The campus is dead: long live the campus?

Jason M Lodge , Griffith University

For £9,000, students expect their classes to go digital

Neil Gordon , University of Hull

Skew towards science is neglecting a £23.4bn social sciences industry

Patrick Dunleavy , London School of Economics and Political Science

No room for sloppiness in online classroom

Mike Sharples , The Open University

UK trails European neighbours on  cyber-security

Julio Hernandez-Castro , University of Kent

The failure of Udacity: lessons on quality for future MOOCs

Developing countries and the MOOC learning revolution

Allison Littlejohn , Glasgow Caledonian University

MOOCs and the language barrier: is open education not so open after all?

Scott L. Montgomery , University of Washington

From MOOCs to HARVARDs: will online go mainstream?

Geoff Sharrock , The University of Melbourne

MOOCs open for business in the UK

Hugh Davis , University of Southampton

Google and friends put the ‘open’ back into MOOCs

Martin Weller , The Open University

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The Pros and Cons of MOOCS

From Nathan Heller's article, "Laptop U," for The New Yorker

• Tips For Adult Students
• Getting Your Ged

• B.A., English, St. Olaf College

Post-secondary schools of all kinds—expensive, elite colleges, state universities, and community colleges —are flirting with the idea of MOOCs, massive open online courses, where tens of thousands of students can take the same class simultaneously. Is this the future of college? Nathan Heller wrote about the phenomenon in the May 20, 2013, issue of The New Yorker in " Laptop U ." I recommend you find a copy or subscribe online for the full article, but I'll share with you here what I gleaned as the pros and cons of MOOCs from Heller's article.

What Is a MOOC?

The short answer is that a MOOC is an online video of a college lecture. The M stands for massive because there is no limit to the number of students who can enroll from anywhere in the world. Anant Agarwal is a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, and president of edX , a non-profit MOOC company owned jointly MIT and Harvard . In 2011, he launched a forerunner called MITx (Open Courseware), hoping to get 10 times the usual number of classroom students in his spring-semester circuits-and-electronics course, about 1,500. In the first few hours of posting the course, he told Heller, he had 10,000 students sign up from all over the world. The ultimate enrollment was 150,000. Massive.

The Benefit of MOOCs

MOOCs are controversial. Some say they are the future of higher education. Others see them as the eventual downfall of it. Heller found the following benefits to MOOCs in his research.

They Are Free

Right now, most MOOCs are free or nearly free, a definite plus for the student. This is likely to change as universities look for ways to defray the high cost of creating MOOCs.

Provide Solution to Overcrowding

According to Heller, 85% of California's community colleges have course waiting lists. A bill in the California Senate seeks to require the state’s public colleges to give credit for approved online courses.

Force Professors to Improve Lectures

Because the best MOOCs are short, usually an hour at the most, addressing a single topic, professors are forced to examine every bit of material as well as their teaching methods.

Create a Dynamic Archive

That's what Gregory Nagy, professor of classical Greek literature at Harvard, calls it. Actors, musicians, and standup comedians record their best performances for broadcast and posterity, Heller writes; why shouldn't college teachers do the same? He cites Vladimir Nabokov as once suggesting "that his lessons at Cornell be recorded and played each term, freeing him for other activities."

Help Students Keep Up

MOOCs are real college courses, complete with tests and grades. They are filled with multiple choice questions and discussions that test comprehension. Nagy sees these questions as almost as good as essays because, as Heller writes, "the online testing mechanism explains the right response when students miss an answer, and it lets them see the reasoning behind the correct choice when they're right."

The online testing process helped Nagy redesign his classroom course. He told Heller, "Our ambition is actually to make the Harvard experience now closer to the MOOC experience."

Bring People Together

Heller quotes Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard president, regarding her thoughts on a new MOOC, Science & Cooking, that teaches chemistry and physics in the kitchen, "I just have the vision in my mind of people cooking all over the globe together. It’s kind of nice."

Maximize Teaching Time

In what is called a "flipped classroom," teachers send students home with assignments to listen to or watch a recorded lecture, or read it, and return to the classroom for more valuable discussion time or other interactive learning.

Offer Business Opportunities

Several new MOOC companies launched in 2012: edX by Harvard and MIT; Coursera , a Standford company; and Udacity, which focuses on science and tech.

The Minuses of MOOCs

The controversy surrounding MOOCs includes some pretty strong concerns about how they will shape the future of higher education. Here are some of the cons of MOOCs Heller found in his research.

Create "Glorified Teaching Assistants."

Heller writes that Michael J. Sandel, a Harvard justice professor, wrote in a letter of protest, "The thought of the exact same social justice course being taught in various philosophy departments across the country is downright scary."

Make Discussions Challenging

It’s impossible to facilitate meaningful conversation in a classroom with 150,000 students. There are electronic alternatives: message boards, forums, chat rooms, etc., but the intimacy of face-to-face communication is lost, emotions often misunderstood. This is a particular challenge for humanities courses. Heller writes, "When three great scholars teach a poem in three ways, it isn't inefficiency. It is the premise on which all humanistic inquiry is based."

Grading Papers Impossible

Even with the help of graduate students, grading tens of thousands of essays or research papers is daunting, to say the least. Heller reports that edX is developing software to grade papers, software that gives students immediate feedback, allowing them to make revisions. Harvard's Faust isn't completely on board. Heller quotes her as saying, "I think they are ill-equipped to consider irony, elegance, and…I don’t know how you get a computer to decide if there’s something there it hasn’t been programmed to see."

Increase Dropout Rates

Heller reports that when MOOCs are strictly online, not a blended experience with some classroom time, "dropout rates are typically more than 90%."

Intellectual Property, Financial Issues

Who owns an online course when the professor who creates it moves to another university? Who gets paid for teaching and/or creating online courses? These are issues that MOOC companies will need to work out in the upcoming years.

Miss the magic

Peter J. Burgard is a professor of German at Harvard. He has decided not to participate in online courses because he believes the "college experience" comes from sitting in preferably small groups having genuine human interactions, "really digging into and exploring a knotty topic—a difficult image, a fascinating text, whatever. That's exciting. There’s a chemistry to it that simply cannot be replicated online."

Will Shrink, Eliminate Faculties

Heller writes that Burgard sees MOOCs as destroyers of traditional higher education. Who needs professors when a school can hire an adjunct to manage a MOOC class? Fewer professors will mean fewer Ph.D.s granted, smaller graduate programs, fewer fields, and subfields taught, the eventual death of entire "bodies of knowledge." David W. Wills, professor of religious history at Amherst , agrees with Burgard. Heller writes that Wills worries about "academia falling under hierarchical thrall to a few star professors." He quotes Wills, "It's like higher education has discovered the megachurch."

MOOCs will most definitely be the source of many conversations and debates in the near future. Watch for related articles coming soon.

• The Dark Side of the MOOCs
• Ivy League MOOCs - Free Online Classes from the Ivies
• Online Humanities Classes: Credit and Non-Credit Options
• Study Architecture Online - Free Courses on the Web
• The 12 Best Apps for Students and Teachers
• Whole Group Discussion Pros and Cons
• What Is a Private University?
• Pros and Cons of Teaching
• What Are Some Pros and Cons of the Common Core State Standards?
• Pros and Cons of Earning Your High School Diploma Online
• The Pros and Cons of Block Schedules
• Advantages and Disadvantages of Lecturing
• The Pros and Cons of Getting a Journalism Degree in College
• Examining the Pros and Cons of Standardized Testing
• How to Get an Online Teaching Position
• Are Coursera’s Online Specialization Certificates Worth the Cost?

Home — Essay Samples — Education — E-Learning — Massive Open Online Courses and Their Impact on Education

Massive Open Online Courses and Their Impact on Education

• Categories: Distance Education E-Learning Education System

About this sample

Words: 2252 |

12 min read

Published: Aug 1, 2022

Words: 2252 | Pages: 5 | 12 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, difference between moocs and e-learning courses, role of moocs in education, moocs in the lis profession and their benefits, what is a massive open online course (mooc).

• Synchronous MOOC: -Synchronous MOOC has a fixed start date and a clear end date; they have fixed deadlines for assignments and assessments.
• Asynchronous MOOC: - Have no fixed dates and no fixed end dates. Asynchronous MOOC is available anywhere and every time.
• Transfer MOOC: -Transfer MOOC takes existing courses &transfers them into the MOOC platform.
• Made MOOC: -Made MOOC is more innovative in their use of videos. They provide challenging assignments, problem-solving & various levels of software-driven interactive experiences.
• Adaptive MOOC: -Adaptive MOOC is based on dynamic assessment & data gathering on the course and the courses.
• Group MOOC: -Starts with small collaborative groups of students. The aim is to increase the student's memory.
• Mini MOOC:- Mini MOOCs are associated with universities, whose courses last many weeks and many a time fit the semester structure and timetable of traditional institutions.

Advantages and Disadvantages of MOOCs

• Open environment
• Freely accessible
• Massive participation
• Support of the community and the instructors
• Communication tools, and use of social networks
• It gives more importance to the learning process

E-learning course

• Closed environment
• Registration fee is required to access
• Limited group
• Majority support of the teaching staff
• Communication through debate forums
• Emphasis on Evaluation and accreditation oriented
• Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) and American Library Association (ALA) these two associations are developed through a discussion name as Library Support for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) Discussion Group
• “The Hyperlinked Library MOOC” is invented by Michael Stephens and Kyle Jones by School of Information at San Jose State University.
• OCLC is organized conference in 2013 on MOOCs and Libraries: Massive Opportunity or Overwhelming Challenge?
• Gerry McKiernan created blog for MOOCs and Libraries: MOOCs and Libraries is devoted to documenting librarian and library involvement in Massive Open Online Courses

MOOCs and free online platforms

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• Math & Logic
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• Detection, Diagnosis and Management of Plant Diseases
• Design Thinking for Agricultural Implements
• Introduction to Sustainable Development in Business
• Physics of Semiconductors

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Using Transformer Language Models to Validate Peer-Assigned Essay Scores in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

LAK23: 13th International Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference

Related Papers

Donna Kidwell

This paper utilizes a case-study design to discuss global aspects of massive open online course (MOOC) assessment. Drawing from the literature on open-course models and linguistic gatekeeping in education, we position freeform assessment in MOOCs as both challenging and valuable, with an emphasis on current practices and student resources. We report on the findings from a linguistically-diverse pharmacy MOOC, taught by a native English speaker, which utilized an automated essay scoring (AES) assignment to engage students in the application of course content. Native English speakers performed better on the assignment overall, across both automated-and human-graders. Additionally, our results suggest that the use of an AES system may disadvantage non-native English speakers, with agreement between instructor and AES scoring being significantly lower for non-native English speakers. Survey responses also revealed that students often utilized online translators, though analyses showed that this did not detrimentally affect essay grades. Pedagogical and future assignment suggestions are then outlined, utilizing a multicultural-lens and acknowledging the possibility of certain assessments disadvantaging non-native English speakers within an English-based MOOC system.

British Journal of Educational Technology

EDULEARN22 Proceedings

Alexandru Stanciu

Feedback is not only an effective means of promoting and consolidating learning but also a crucial factor in what concerns increasing students’ writing skills, knowledge, and strategies. Hence, the importance of using specific tools that provide immediate scoring and feedback on student writing, such as Automated Writing Evaluation (AWE). Advantages such as a great capacity to process massive information, the accuracy of the scoring engine, individualized feedback on essays regarding the linguistic properties, technical quality, and organization, and also support for multiple essay submissions underline the importance of using this kind of tools within the educational system not only to accelerate the learning process but also to improve students’ abilities to absorb and improve their knowledge. Despite these benefits, many instruments for automated writing feedback are still limited in functionality, and most of them are proprietary, thus potentially restraining their use due to the cost factors. In the attempt to advance the research on the topic of AWE, a recent competition [1] had the objective to develop a solution to the challenge of automatically classifying augmentative and rhetorical elements in essays written by the gymnasium and high-school students. More specifically, the task was to predict the human annotations of the students’ writings which experts previously evaluated. This article aims to present a machine learning methodology for identifying and classifying various discourse elements based on an ensemble of transformer-based models while highlighting the importance of incorporating AWE among the tools used in the evaluation process of essays. Also, in addition to analysing essays, future directions for applying the evaluation framework to scientific articles in specific domains will be discussed.

Akanksha Malhotra

Automated Essay Scoring (AES) is a cross-disciplinary effort involving Education, Linguistics, and Natural Language Processing (NLP). The efficacy of an NLP model in AES tests it ability to evaluate long-term dependencies and extrapolate meaning even when text is poorly written. Large pretrained transformer-based language models have dominated the current stateof-the-art in many NLP tasks, however, the computational requirements of these models make them expensive to deploy in practice. The goal of this paper is to challenge the paradigm in NLP that bigger is better when it comes to AES. To do this, we evaluate the performance of several fine-tuned pretrained NLP models with a modest number of parameters on an AES dataset. By ensembling our models, we achieve excellent results with fewer parameters than most pretrained transformer-based models.

Anat Ben-simon

This study evaluated a “substantively driven” method for scoring NAEP writing assessments automatically. The study used variations of an existing commercial program, e-rater®, to compare the performance of three approaches to automated essay scoring: a brute-empirical approach in which variables are selected and weighted solely according to statistical criteria, a hybrid approach in which a fixed set of variables more closely tied to the characteristics of good writing was used but the weights were still statistically determined, and a substantively driven approach in which a fixed set of variables was weighted according to the judgments of two independent committees of writing experts. The research questions concerned (1) the reproducibility of weights across writing experts, (2) the comparison of scores generated by the three automated approaches, and (3) the extent to which models developed for scoring one NAEP prompt generalize to other NAEP prompts of the same genre. Data came ...

Journal of Writing Analytics

Michael Flor

It is important for developers of automated scoring systems to ensure that their systems are as fair and valid as possible. This commitment means evaluating the performance of these systems in light of construct-irrelevant response strategies. The enhancement of systems to detect and deal with these kinds of strategies is often an iterative process, whereby as new strategies come to light they need to be evaluated and effective mechanisms built into the automated scoring systems to handle them. In this paper, we focus on the Babel system, which automatically generates semantically incohesive essays. We expect that these essays may unfairly receive high scores from automated scoring engines despite essentially being nonsense. We found that the classifier built on Babel-generated essays and good-faith essays and using features from the automated scoring engine can distinguish the Babel-generated essays from the good-faith ones with 100% accuracy. We also found that if we integrated this classifier into the automated scoring engine it flagged very few responses that were submitted as part of operational submissions (76 of 434,656). The responses that were flagged had previously been assigned a score of Null (non-scorable) or a score of 1 by human experts. The measure of lexical-semantic cohesion shows promise in being able to distinguish Babel-generated essays from good-faith essays. Our results show that it is possible to detect the kind of gaming strategy illustrated by the Babel system and add it to an automated scoring engine without adverse effects on essays seen during real high-stakes tests. We also show that a measure of lexical-semantic cohesion can separate Babel-generated essays from good-faith essays to a certain degree, depending on task. This points to future work that would generalize the capability to detect semantic incoherence in essays.

Pertanika Journal of Social Science and Humanities

Nung Kion Lee

Automated Essay Scoring (AES) is a service or software that can predictively grade essay based on a pre-trained computational model. It has gained a lot of research interest in educational institutions as it expedites the process and reduces the effort of human raters in grading the essays as close to humans' decisions. Despite the strong appeal, its implementation varies widely according to researchers' preferences. This critical review examines various AES development milestones specifically on different methodologies and attributes used in deriving essay scores. To generalize existing AES systems according to their constructs, we attempted to fit all of them into three frameworks which are content similarity, machine learning and hybrid. In addition, we presented and compared various common evaluation metrics in measuring the efficiency of AES and proposed Quadratic Weighted Kappa (QWK) as standard evaluation metric since it corrects the agreement purely by chance when estimate the degree of agreement between two raters. In conclusion, the paper proposes hybrid framework standard as the potential upcoming AES framework as it capable to aggregate both style and content to predict essay grades Thus, the main objective of this study is to discuss various critical issues pertaining to the current development of AES which yielded our recommendations on the future AES development.

2015 IEEE International Conference on Data Mining Workshop (ICDMW)

Jill Burstein

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Management: Massive Open Online Courses Proposal Essay

Introduction, background and relevance, findings for, findings against, recommendations.

Following the proposal to research the introduction of MOOCs at UMUC, the taskforce on program implementation recommends further studies on MOOC for climate change. Concerning findings submitted on the research report, UMUC needs to conduct a unique course offering interaction with real global issues. Aware of the urgency of climate change awareness and the need for green practices, the task force proposes contributions to environmental conservation.

The world continues to grapple with adverse weather patterns occasioned by erratic climate. Conservationists point at the possibility of reckless waste disposal and mismanagement of air pollutants as the main causes. Adverse weather continues to cause deaths and property destruction.

With the introduction of management and conservation efforts, climate change control holds promise to the mitigation of these losses. Academic interventions among the most common sectors propose waste management and reduction in pollution. Green practices in industries and conservation culture at the household levels provide ways of controlling climate change. The proposed MOOCs on handling climate change integrates various conservation principles previously not offered online.

The relevance of the proposed MOOCs touches on the current global trends of industrial responsibility for the environment. The corporate culture of reduced emissions and treatment of wastes before release into the environment form part of concerted efforts to handle climate change.

Equally, household waste reduction through efficient systems and recycling of waste materials inform individuals on mitigating climate change at the lowest level. Creating awareness and providing information supports global demand for knowledge on cheap platforms (Diamond, 2012). A sensitive global population about willingness to enforce green practices continues to create demand for such knowledge. Free provision of such courses provides a boost to the global community to avoid destructive practices.

Presence of academic theories against climate change may affect reception for the courses. Political and economic hurdles may equally make it difficult for the uptake of the MOOCs across the globe. For instance, the US government refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol that would subject the US to international regulation on pollution.

As such, the US poses an unclear stance on its willingness to support programs fighting reckless industrial emissions control. Huge corporations with unfriendly practices leading to emissions dish out bribes to authorities and block regulations. In such a setting, the future of the MOOCs remains uncertain with critics on the programs adding their voice (Anderson, 2013).

The task force proposes to your office that the missing links in free conservation courses offer an opportunity for growth for other online courses.

Introduction of MOOCs for various aspects of conservation and emission management for different audiences will facilitate a smooth introduction. The task force advises that you recommend the introduction of MOOCs targeting corporations on designing green office and industrial practices. Diverse programs in line with the conservation effort needed will provide success across the demand spectrum.

Additionally, the task force recommends that the MOOCs target domestic and public institutions. The teaching of innovative and cheap technologies for handling climate change will attract interest from every sector of society. In this end, an interactive platform for contributions and innovations will inform the University in making progress.

Anderson, N. (2013). Online college courses to grant credentials, for a fee . Web.

Diamond, L. (2012). Open online classes transform Georgia colleges. Web.

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IvyPanda. (2024, February 16). Management: Massive Open Online Courses. https://ivypanda.com/essays/management-massive-open-online-courses/

"Management: Massive Open Online Courses." IvyPanda , 16 Feb. 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/management-massive-open-online-courses/.

IvyPanda . (2024) 'Management: Massive Open Online Courses'. 16 February.

IvyPanda . 2024. "Management: Massive Open Online Courses." February 16, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/management-massive-open-online-courses/.

1. IvyPanda . "Management: Massive Open Online Courses." February 16, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/management-massive-open-online-courses/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Management: Massive Open Online Courses." February 16, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/management-massive-open-online-courses/.

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