OU blog

Personal Blogs

Munir Moosa Sadruddin

Activity 14: Comparing MOOCs

Visible to anyone in the world

 

Coursera

DS106

Technology

Using varieties of technologies such as podcast, OER, recorded lectures, discussion forums- all these can be accessed from computers, android mobile or tablet.

 

 

 

Blogging, audio, video, forum, Soundcloud Account, Twitter, Flickr

Pedagogy

Self-directed learning, traditional approach, peer and collaborative learning

Self-directed learning, peer and collaborative learning, case-study,  group work

General approach and philosophy

Coursera is a technological company, which provides formal as well as informal means of online education for everyone. Learners can choose the course of their choice from the pool of subjects offered by top universities and institutions. The partner universities including but not limited to PennState, Princeton University, John Hopkins University, etc. Learners can master any skills to boost their professional or personal prospects. Each course lasts for 4-6 weeks. Different activities such as watching videos, reading resources help learners to gain knowledge. Peer-review assignments, formative assessment, as well as auto-graded assignments are used to assess students. Upon successful completion, learners can apply for getting a verified certificate by paying the fee.

It was initiated in 2010 by University of Mary Washington as the part of experimenting on Computer Science Course in Digital Storytelling. The site portrays the best collection of student work, radio show archive, etc. They offer open courses such as Social Media Production ds106. Varieties of assignments are given to the learners such as visual, audio, web, video, mashup, writing, animated and 3d.


Below, there is a list of subject areas available and explore to select any course, according to your interest


You can find the list of few subjects I completed on Coursera


Here is how certificate looks like


My Experience in MOOCS
 
I have completed few of the online courses through Coursera and edX. The courses and the verified certificates were earlier available free. But sadly, these platforms have now taken a business approach. They charge some fee for the verified certificate. Of course, a pool of courses and resources are available for free. But still, certificates or badges play an integral role in motivating many learners. I emailed the MOOC course instructors quite a few times but never received any reply!- Maybe limited staff!  No peer support! No social connections! I never knew about other participants’ presence!  Also, I never found discussion forums active! Assessment methods were quite weak as they mostly assess your knowledge! Security and transparency are two of the serious issues! Unfortunately, you will not find any research report highlighting all the loopholes about MOOCs since the REALISTIC data of learners’ dropout and their experiences on large (MASSIVE) scale is concealed by the MOOCs provider.

Permalink Add your comment
Share post

Comments

Victoria Wright

New comment

You have recorded useful notes and you have much experience having taken part in a few MOOCs. This may all be very useful to you for TMA.

Victoria