International Journal of Enhanced Research Publications, ISSN: XXXX-XXXX Vol. 2 Issue 4, April-2013, pp: (1-4), Available online at: www.erpublications.com Massive Online Open Course (MOOC): New Learning Style Maher Alghali*, H. M. A. Najwa, I. Roesnita Faculty of Science and Technology Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM) Nilai, Malaysia

Abstract: The widespread use of modern technologies in every aspect of our lives places educational institutions under pressure to involve new technologies in their learning process. Over the recent years, the field of online learning has developed to include an increasing number of Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs), which offered openly, for free online courses to unlimited participations around the world. MOOC is considering as a cloud learning environment which uses cloud computing platform to perform the course features. MOOC’s are naturally hosted on clouds. In this perspective, this paper will briefly discuss MOOC with a review of the history, characteristics, and the possible benefits for learners and institutions. We will look into a few challenges that need to be recognized in adoption MOOCs into the teaching-learning environment. Finally this paper highlights the influence of cloud computing on MOOC.

Keywords: Massive Online Open Courses, MOOC; Online Learning; Cloud Computing; Cloud Learning Environment.

Introduction

MOOCs represent a recent trend in online education, which many universities offering quality courses through platforms such as Coursera, edX, Udemy, and Udacity. MOOCs offer to students an opportunity to learn from the best educators at some of the world’s top universities with no cost (1), with rapid grows in technology make easily of many MOOCs reached thousands of participants from all over the world in one course (2).MOOCs platforms also allow individuals who are interested to build courses to take full use of the platform supported by cloud computing which integrating various resources to come together. The key features of MOOCs are to offer new option to a massive number of people to attend online courses for free wherever they are (1).

Massive Online Open Courses

While MOOC is expansive and obscure concept, Oxford online dictionary defines MOOC as “A course of study made available over the Internet without charge to a very large number of people, anyone who decides to take a MOOC simply logs on to the website and signs up”(3). However, McAuley (4) has defined MOOC as “integrates the connectivity of social networking, the facilitation of an acknowledged expert in a field of study, and a collection of freely accessible online resources. Perhaps most importantly, however, a MOOC builds on the active engagement of several hundred to several thousand ‘students’ who self-organize their participation according to learning goals, prior knowledge and skills, and common interests. Although it may share in some of the conventions of an ordinary course, such as a pre-defined timeline and weekly topics for consideration, a MOOC generally carries no fees, no prerequisites other than Internet access and interest”. The term “Massive” implies that a MOOC have the ability to involve unlimited of participations. An essential advantage of a large number of participations is the opportunity for make sub-network based on language, geographical locations, physical “meet-ups (5). However, the course should be planned to allow changes in the amount of participations whatsoever whatever, increase or decrease (6). The term “Open” has multiple meaning in MOOCs. It could mean that the course allow to participate outside the university that organized the course (6). Open can also refer to there is no require any prerequisites, such as previous studies or to have a degree. Open term also mean the students can access content and implement the activities of the course without fees. However, term OPEN could come from the concept Open Educational Resources which the course should be available by an open license, so the course content could be reused by others(6).

Page | 1 The term “Online” implies that the students can take the course online without physical attendance at a classroom (2). This feature is important because it allow the students to complete the courses anywhere in the world with a reliable Internet connection. The term “Courses” implies that MOOCs have a set start and stop time. However, MOOCs usually be available after the end of courses in social interactions, forums or blogs to allow the others benefit from the content of the course that has been taken (7). MOOC History

The first open e-learning course was launched in 2008 , when about 2,300 students from the general public took part in an open online course free of charge that over 12 weeks called “Connectivism and Connective Knowledge”, organized by Stephen Downes and George Siemens in University of Manitoba (Canada)(6). This idea give the inspiration to Stanford University (California USA) in 2011 to offered “Introduction to artificial intelligence course” prepared by Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig. This course significantly succeeded in attracting 160,000 online participations from 190 countries (8). Furthermore, Andrew Ng lunched company called Coursera which have partnership with several popular universities to offer a platform for online courses. Over and above, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University launched edX as a non-profit MOOC platform. Even though these MOOCs platforms are different, they have same objective which is to focus on building great learning environment further than traditional teaching style (9). Then MOOC concept became widespread in 2012 when several large Universities started their own MOOCs. According to The New York Times, 2012 became "the year of the MOOC (10). By the end of first half of 2014, The University of Pennsylvania has reported, 2.3 million students from more than 200 countries have enrolled for open courses. About 90,000 statements of accomplishment have been granted via the Coursera platform (11).

MOOC Types

MOOC models are developing rapidly. The current MOOC literature classified MOOCs as two main types, xMOOCs and cMOOCs(13). A. cMOOCs cMOOCs based on self-organized learning or the learning theory of Connectivism which developed by George Siemens. The main idea of cMOOCs is the students present their own view by using digital platforms (14). Students can build their own networks via blogs, wikis, Google groups, Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking tools outside the learning platform to make connections with content, learning communities and other learners to create and construct knowledge. Within a cMOOC, students are encouraged (not obligatory) to actively involve. Education institutions are not typically sponsor cMOOCs courses .but they give their time to create a framework for learning where students from all over the world can share, connect, participate and collaborate to understand and extend their professional and personal network (15). B. xMOOCs The origins of xMOOCs go back to 2011, when Peter Norvig and Sebastian Thrun offered students the chance to enroll in their AI (Artificial Intelligence) course. Traditional universities are the driving force behind this xMOOC model. The xMOOC focuses generally on instructor lectures as teaching approaches (16). The pedagogical model is based on “teacher as expert” and “learner as knowledge consumer.” The instructors with a support team usually prepare records video lectures. Then the learners watch the lectures video online, understanding the course, and then they will be evaluated through graded exams.. xMOOCs often leave students feeling mostly disconnected, as the instructor interacts entirely remotely with course participants (16). Challenges A.A.A. Dropout One key challenge in of MOOCs is a high participant’s dropout rate comparison with traditional university courses. The average dropout rate for a MOOC is between 91% and 93% (17).For example, the 160,000 students which enrolled in artificial intelligence MOOC, only 23,000 actually completed the course (16). Another example is from 104,000 participants who registered in the 2011 online machine-learning course, 46,000 submitted at least one assignment, 20,000 completed a fundamental part of the course, and only 12.5%, are passed (13). However, dropouts in MOOCs may be driven by various reasons. The students in traditional courses usually consider credit seeking, motivation of paid tuition fees, and to fulfill degree requirements (18). On the other hand, Course suppliers believe that even if only 10% of the students accomplish the courses learning goal this would still outnumber the usual participants who graduated over years from the similar course taught (1). A.A.B. Assessment One of the challenges of MOOCs is the ability to evaluate big amount of participants in MOOCs (19). The assessment is an essential issue for success of MOOC in the future. Currently MOOCs do not offer formal accreditation of institutions,

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which show the different value of learning outcome between MOOCs and academic institutions courses (20). At present, MOOCs providers are only given a non-credit certificate such as participation, completion or attendance certificate (21). However there are some assessment tools to help to evaluate MOOC courses, but still in early stage of MOOCs lifecycle and will be enhanced rapidly. Significant steps have already been made to overcome these obstacles (21). A.A.C. Cheating and Plagiarism Even though the MOOCs courses do not grant academic credit, there is growing concern for cheating and plagiarism from course providers (1). Recently, participants taking free online courses offered by the Coursera Company have reported a lot of cases of plagiarism (22). In order to encourage universities to consider MOOCs as universities credit, course providers must pay attention to these incidents. A.A.D. Individual Instruction MOOCs need to deliver course to a big number of students. MOOCs have to deal with a wide diverse of learners and different learning styles around the world. The lecture faces some challenges to engage learners, preserve their interests in the course and personalize the learning environment to fit learning style and need to all students (23). A.A.E. Copyright MOOCs present complicated copyright concerns that can corrupt the relationship between education institutions, instructors and learners. In the case of a faculty member leaves the college or university for any reason. Who will have copyright of the MOOC and its content the faculty member, the institution, or the platform provider? (24)

Benefits A.1.A. Almost free MOOCs are available to almost everyone who can access to the internet and the majority of MOOCs courses are free or nearly free. Thus, MOOCs offer a great opportunity for any Internet user to discover a new area of interest or take higher education. A.1.B. Flexibility The learning times and places are managing by participant that best fit their schedule. Thus MOOCs grants the flexibility that many students need for knowledge acquisition. A.1.C. Cooperation MOOCs motivate students to interact with other students who have same interest. Students also can view a various opinion and ideas which are causing useful discussions that can reflect to further interest in a topic. Universal classes Being part of a universal class, participants can gain insight into attitude, thoughts, and trends among different people and nationality on a certain topic. A.1.D. Variety The Increasing growth number of MOOCs course will give the opportunity to the students to choice from a variety of free online courses. This will allow learning and development to be convenient to the needs of each student. A.1.E. Lifelong learning MOOCs open a world of lifelong learning chance. MOOCs are perfect way of continuing students’ education to gain the knowledge and skills needed to adapt in a rapidly changing world.

Influence of Cloud Computing on MOOC

A. Easy to establish MOOCs Cloud service providers offer many free platforms and software to set up online MOOCs for construct a learning space. With cloud computing, instructors no longer face any technical problems to build MOOCs courses. Moreover, MOOCs instructors, students, and educations institution can get can the latest service without need to download or install any expensive program (25). Thus, cloud computing encourage teachers to carry out more MOOCs. B. Accessible anywhere and anytime Using cloud computing has the potential to get strong multimedia capabilities without complicated users -side configuration. This feature makes MOOCs accessible anywhere, anytime from the students by a broad range of devices such as Netbooks, iPads, cell phones, iPods, e-readers and even PDAs. C. Contain educational resources effectively

Page | 3 Cloud computing provides the ability to access large capacity storage, high-speed bandwidth and high-speed computer servers. By hosting learning resources in cloud, students and teachers are able to explore learning resources more quickly and easily in order to improve the effectiveness of MOOCs goals (26). D. Equal opportunity Any student can use necessary cloud computing services for their study. So, all students have same chance to learn. The successful or not is depend in the students effort. Moreover, in cloud computing, evaluation methods are more various than traditional learning (27). Cloud computing can keep online history records of students as index of learning evaluating. The evaluation is very convenient for the instructors and learner to evaluate each other, to evaluate between groups. To make more just evaluation, anonymous assessment can be made (27).

Conclusion

For over the past few years, numerous of universities offer online courses which were generally designed based on traditional lecture style. The emerging of technology has brought cloud computing concept. Cloud computing has the ability to deliver learning material anywhere and at anytime as long as the users are connected to the Internet. Cloud computing has positive effect in online learning which is clearly represented in MOOCs. MOOCs present an emerging approach of online learning that is result of cloud technology. In my opinion the MOOC paradigm will do to the learning what cloud computing has been done to information technology by providing education as a service or education on demand. This paper had briefly highlighted the definition, history, and characteristics of MOOC, This paper also had raised the issue of MOOC with the positive effect of cloud computing on MOOC.

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