MEDIA and INFORMATION LITERACY
2nd Quarter
MELTON A. MERZA, CE, LPT
1. Defined massive, open, online, and course;
2. Identified the two kinds /classifications and
various types of MOOC;
3. Used the advantages of MOOC and cloud-based
learning.
Lesson Overview
“The State shall protect and promote the right of
all citizens to quality education at all levels and
shall take appropriate steps to make such
education accessible to all.”
1987 Philippine Constitution, Article XIV, Section 1
Technologies have been advancing to the level
where people can reach various things easily,
especially in education. Since the start of the 21st
century, educators continuously search for
alternatives to break the traditional way of
teaching and learning in this digital world. Of
course, accessibility and quality are prime
importance to these alternatives. One and
probably the trendiest globally among these
alternatives is the Massive Open Online Course
(MOOC). Are you familiar of this?
Canadian Educators, Stephen Downes and George
Siemens, developed an online course which offered
freely available online educational services
called Connectivism and Connective Knowledge in
2008. With this initiative, Massive Open Online
Course (MMOC) was created.
To understand the phenomenon of MOOC, let us
define first the words massive, open, online and
course.
MASSIVE refers to the scale of the course and
alludes to the large number of learners who
participate in some MOOCs.
OPEN has multiple meanings in relation to
MOOCs. It may refer to access; anyone, no matter
his or her background, prior experience or current
context may enrol in a MOOC. Open can also refer
to cost; that is, a MOOC is available free of charge.
A third meaning of open relates to the open nature
of knowledge acquisition in a MOOC, including the
employment of Open educational resources (OER)
or Open Course Ware (OCW) which is available
under a Creative Commons licence.
ONLINE means that the courses are offered online,
with the access of internet.
COURSE, three criteria must be met for a MOOC to
be regarded as a ‘course’: (1) it is bounded by a
start and end date; (2) it is covered by a common
theme or discourse; and (3) it is a progression of
ordered events.
What is MOOC?
❖ A massive open online course (MOOC) is a free
Web-based distance learning program that is
designed for the participation of large numbers of
geographically dispersed students.
❖ The word MOOC was coined in 2008 by Dave
Cormier, from the University of Prince Edward
Island for a course offered by the University of
Manitoba, "Connectivism and Connective
Knowledge.
❖ A MOOC is an online course with the option of
free and open registration, a publicly shared
curriculum, and open-ended outcomes. MOOCs
integrate social networking, accessible online
resources, and are facilitated by leading
practitioners in the field of study. Most
significantly, MOOCs build on the engagement of
learners who self-organize their participation
according to
learning goals, prior knowledge and skills, and
common interests.
❖ Massive Open Online Course is an open
access and an interactive way to facilitate
students’ online study. It can provide participants
with course
materials such as videos, lectures and study
materials. It is primarily an “online course”
delivered over the Internet to potentially an
unlimited number of students at a time.
In 2013, University of the Philippines-Open
University (UPOU) offered the first MOOC in the
country. This was done after the New York Times
named 2012 as “The Year of MOOCs”. This made
more accessible to Filipinos anywhere in the
country,
even anyone outside the country, to quality and
free education.
Below are the two (2) Kinds of MOOC:
1. The Connectivist MOOC (cMOOC)
2. The Content-based MOOC (xMOOC)
Various MOOC Types
xMOOC - The most common type of MOOC,
organized around a central professor and core
curriculum of predefined learning materials.
cMOOC - "Connectivity" MOOCs resemble
graduate seminar courses; course materials
provide a starting point for student discussions
with the core of the
learning coming from student-to-student
interactions.
DOCC - Distributed Online Collaborative Courses
are courses in which the same course material is
distributed to students at multiple institutions,
but the exact administrations of the material can
vary. Students can also engage with each other
across institutions via the online component.
BOOC - Big Open Online Courses are similar to
MOOCs but limited to a smaller
number of students; typically, 50.
SMOC - Synchronous Massive Online Courses
differ from xMOOCs in that the lectures are
broadcast live requiring students to log in at
specific times in order to hear the lectures.
SPOC - Small Private Online Courses are similar to
BOOCs, in that the class sizes are limited, but the
students teacher interactions are more closely
modelled after traditional classroom interactions.
SPOCs are similarly referenced in the "flipped
classroom" model.
Corporate MOOCs - MOOC courses designed for
employee training or continuing education
typically subsidized or uniquely accredited by
employers.
Advantages
• No tuition fees
• Open access, exposing top level professors at schools
that would otherwise
be unavailable to much of the World's population
• Open courses for all interested, regardless of location, resulting
in a more diverse student base
• Students can collaborate with their peers from different parts of
the world.
• Students can share work, critique, and receive others feedback.
Provide online interaction amongst students.
• Some enthusiastic professors have found global sharing of
knowledge more appealing. Many acknowledge that MOOCs
help them reevaluate their pedagogical methods, while
improving knowledge sharing.
Disadvantages
• They make it easy for students to drop out.
• MOOCs do not provide active feedback due to
large number of students.
• Students need to be responsible for their own
work because MOOCs provide self-directed
learning.
• Technical problems
• Limited real-world engagement
Can you earn a degree by taking an MOOC?
Currently, the answer is no. MOOCs is designed
primarily to align the courses to a college or
university. Though not all MOOCs offer academic
credit, with easier access to these educational
tools, knowledge is surely be shared freely.
Summary
MOOCs are a type of online course that are in their
early stages of maturity and are likely to continue
developing in the future. They will probably form a
permanent part of the education landscape, but
they seem unlikely to significantly disrupt many
aspects of conventional higher education.
Perhaps the greatest value of MOOCs in the future
will be for providing a means for tackling large
global problems through community action.
