Explore A New Learning Frontier: MOOC

By Inge de Waard

“As educational technology is becoming more mainstream through social media and mobile devices, there is a rising interest to find methodologies that build upon these new technologies to enhance the learning and teaching process. MOOC is one of these emerging formats. A MOOC can boost your institutional, corporate, or NGO knowledge, if you are open to its innovative approach.”

A MOOC is a Massive Open Online Course. It is a gathering of participants, of people willing to jointly exchange information and collaboratively enhance their knowledge.Over 10,000 learners worldwide have participated in MOOCs on a variety of topics. MOOCs appeal to knowledge workers, trainers, and teachers. Why? Because MOOCs enable a high-end knowledge exchange to occur. It is a learning model that fits expert training, interdisciplinary learning, ad hoc education — any type of learning that allows information to flow within a network of peers.

MOOCs fit the contemporary shift towards networked learning. George Siemens, one of the pioneers in this area, wrote, “Learning is now happening through communities of practice, personal networks, and through completion of work-related tasks,” in an environment in which, “know-how and know-what is being supplemented with know-where (the understanding of where to find knowledge needed)” (2005, p. 4).

Continued at: http://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/721/?utm_campaign=lsmag&utm_medium=email&utm_source=elg-insider

Related articles

• MOOCs and higher education; MOOCs as distributed networks for learning (michaelseangallagher.org)
• MOOCs: a Model for Open Education? (downes.ca)