Marcos Cánovas in his upcoming MOOC
MOOCs (massive open online courses) have been with us for a number of years now. Most often cited as the first MOOC is the course on artificial intelligence at Stanford offered by Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig in 2011, drawing in 160,000 online registrants. The arrival of MOOCs on the higher education scene caused near-panic about the scale of disruption that might be caused. Five years later we can see that talk of an immediate revolution was exaggerated. Nonetheless, MOOCs continue to thrive all over the world and their popularity has certainly contributed to the gathering pace of change in higher education.
Among the remarkable consequences of MOOC-inspired uptake of agile educational technology are the following:
- MOOC methodologies are increasingly used in blended learning and on-campus courses too.
- Flipped classrooms, and in particular resort to recorded mini-lectures, are becoming more common.
- Higher education centres use MOOCs as a powerful means of attracting public attention.
- More and more higher education teachers are feeling encouraged to get their professional practice visible online.
- Mixed MOOC + mentor courses are appearing.
According to Class Central, one of the most well-known MOOC aggregators, there are now “close to 6,000 MOOCs from 600+ universities around the world”. To help newcomers find their way around this enormous range of free courses, they recently put together a list of the Top 50 Free Online Courses of All Time, based on numerous independent reviews. There really is something for everybody here, and many of the listed MOOCs overlap with UVic-UCC courses.
What are you waiting for? Get over there!
During the academic year 2016-2017, the first UVic-UCC MOOCs are scheduled for launch, thanks to the supervision of Javier Leiva, leader of the UVic-UCC Diversity project for digital transformation.
The future for MOOCs may not be what was predicted but they are going to be influential and exciting. Watch this space!