MOOCs in higher education - opportunities and threats: or how small can a learning unit be in university degree programmes?

TY - GEN

T1 - MOOCs in higher education - opportunities and threats

T2 - EADTU The Open, Online and Flexible Higher Education Conference 2016

AU - Bang, Jørgen

AU - Dalsgaard, Christian

AU - Kjær, Arne

AU - Donovan, Maria Margaret O

PY - 2016

Y1 - 2016

N2 - MOOCs and Open Online Courses in general offer new pedagogical opportunities to support student-centred learning. Since 2012/13 the focus on the learning process has increased and today the result is a number of interesting approaches with abbreviations such as: BOOC - Blending Online and On-Campus Course, DOCC - Distributed Open Collaborative Course, HOOC - Hybrid Open Online Course, SMOC - Synchronous Massive Online Course and SPOC – Small Private Online Course, among others. All are examples of innovative ways to support personalised learning adapted to the local/national educational framework. Parallel to these developments, there is also an increasing interest within Higher Education to focus on short stand-alonecourses and resource-based learning. This might support flexibility in educational programmes, but at the same time challenges the reflective dimension of degree programmes. In this paper, we discuss the pedagogical framework for integrating MOOCS and Open Online Courses in Higher Education in order to explore opportunities and to avoid threats. Furthermore, we discuss how learning units (integration of Open Educational Resources with learning activities) may support the reflective dimension in higher education offering open online courses.

AB - MOOCs and Open Online Courses in general offer new pedagogical opportunities to support student-centred learning. Since 2012/13 the focus on the learning process has increased and today the result is a number of interesting approaches with abbreviations such as: BOOC - Blending Online and On-Campus Course, DOCC - Distributed Open Collaborative Course, HOOC - Hybrid Open Online Course, SMOC - Synchronous Massive Online Course and SPOC – Small Private Online Course, among others. All are examples of innovative ways to support personalised learning adapted to the local/national educational framework. Parallel to these developments, there is also an increasing interest within Higher Education to focus on short stand-alonecourses and resource-based learning. This might support flexibility in educational programmes, but at the same time challenges the reflective dimension of degree programmes. In this paper, we discuss the pedagogical framework for integrating MOOCS and Open Online Courses in Higher Education in order to explore opportunities and to avoid threats. Furthermore, we discuss how learning units (integration of Open Educational Resources with learning activities) may support the reflective dimension in higher education offering open online courses.

KW - higher education

KW - student-centred learning

KW - open online courses

KW - MOOCs

KW - lifelong learning

M3 - Article in proceedings

SN - 978-90-79730-25-4

SP - 543

EP - 553

BT - Conference proceedings of the online, open and flexible higher education conference

PB - European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU)

Y2 - 19 October 2016 through 21 October 2016

ER -