The world today is witnessing an increasing interest in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). This new form of Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL) is in the spotlight, particularly when it comes to the topic of the evolving nature of higher education learning (Shrader, Wu, Owens-Nicholson, & Santa Ana, 2016).
Advocates of MOOCs propose that open courses are being celebrated because they make education accessible to all with their wide and free of charge reach (Lewin, 2012; Wulf, Blohm, Leimeister, & Brenner, 2014). On the other hand, opponents of MOOCs focus on the lack of empirical evidence to support TEL as the promised advancement to 21st-century pedagogy (Wei-Ping, Ping, & Si-Yuan, 2016). They suggest that the scale of pedagogical improvements offered and provided by MOOCs has been modest with mixed results regarding successes in meeting the needs of the diverse and changing forms of learning.
This report will attempt to list best practices and target the advantages of MOOCs as a valid means for online teaching and learning.
The research was originally published in The Asian Conference on Technology in the Classroom
Authors
Jihan Rabah
