This book provides theoretical and empirical discussions around the impact of MOOCs and other pedagogical strategies for online learning in international contexts. Through discussions of inverse blended learning and other teaching and learning approaches, Part I navigates the pressing conceptual issues around global online education. By analyzing the Malaysia MOOC Initiative—the first governmental MOOC project in the world—Part II offers insight into the developmental strategies, learning design, and integrative approaches of these pioneering efforts. Edited by leading scholars in the field of globalized online learning, this volume offers a valuable contribution to research around collaborative initiatives between governments and universities, especially ones dedicated to open and distance education.

This book provides theoretical and empirical discussions around the impact of MOOCs and other pedagogical strategies for online learning in international contexts. Through discussions of inverse blended learning and other teaching and learning approaches, Part I navigates the pressing conceptual issues around global online education. By analyzing the Malaysia MOOC Initiative—the first governmental MOOC project in the world—Part II offers insight into the developmental strategies, learning design, and integrative approaches of these pioneering efforts. Edited by leading scholars in the field of globalized online learning, this volume offers a valuable contribution to research around collaborative initiatives between governments and universities, especially ones dedicated to open and distance education.

This book demonstrates how blended learning improves access to and enhances the quality of higher education teaching and learning in Asian universities. It first discusses how leading universities in the region drive and support blended learning at the institutional level to enhance student learning engagement and outcomes. It then examines 10 effective implementations and lessons learned of blended learning practices across different disciplinary courses and programmes (humanities and language, science and engineering, social science and education, and others) in the region. The chapters in this book provide an overview of the opportunities and challenges of blended learning for improved access and enhanced quality of higher education, and offer insights into the promising blended learning policies and practices in Asian universities.

This book is an academic publication about the global development of massive open online courses (MOOCs) and major MOOC platforms worldwide in the past decade, as well as the outlook of MOOCs in the future, with an emphasis on Greater China. The book also discusses the upsurge of the demand for online learning and MOOCs during the COVID-19 pandemic. The book is divided into three main parts - Part I: Overview of MOOCs introduces the origin and history of MOOCs and the development of MOOC platforms in Greater China and the global context; Part II: Key Issues discuss the MOOC policies, innovative pedagogy, technology, and ecosystems worldwide; and Part III: Beyond MOOCs probes into the roles and benefits of MOOCs in times of crises, as well as the outlook of MOOCs in the future. In terms of topic diversity, the book contains a comprehensive investigation of the past and latest MOOC developments, extracting and elaborating on relevant information regarding platforms, policies, pedagogy, technology, and ecosystems. Subsequently, in-depth analyses of MOOC data are utilized to deduce the current trends related to the MOOC movement and to extrapolate the likeliest direction of development for MOOCs in the years to come. The book can inform policymakers, education institutions, course instructors, platform developers, investors, researchers, and individual learners of MOOCs about critical information on the present and future of MOOC development, assisting them in making crucial decisions on what initiatives can optimize their advantages in the sector.

As new digital forms of formal and informal learning proliferate, there is an increasing need to better understand how people in different regions of the world are implementing massive open online courses (MOOCs) and other forms of open educational resources (OERs). Educators, researchers, politicians, and numerous other stakeholders want to grasp what the outcomes of these initiatives are and how they can be improved. Ongoing e-learning developments related to both technology and pedagogy have pushed institutions and organizations to grapple with issues of accreditation, credentialing, quality standards, innovative assessment, and learner motivation and attrition, among other areas of concern. In response, MOOCs and Open Education Around the World explores and illuminates unique implementations of MOOCs and open education across regions and nations. The book also focuses on the various opportunities as well as the dilemmas presented in this rapidly evolving age of technology-enabled learning. What are the different delivery formats, interaction possibilities, assessment schemes, and business models? What are the key controversies or issues that must be discussed and addressed? This edited collection explains MOOCs and open education trends and issues in a variety of contexts, shares key research findings, and provides practical suggestions and recommendations for the near future.

With e-learning technologies evolving and expanding at high rates, organizations and institutions around the world are integrating massive open online courses (MOOCs) and other open educational resources (OERs). MOOCs and Open Education in the Global South explores the initiatives that are leveraging these flexible systems to educate, train, and empower populations previously denied access to such opportunities. Featuring contributors leading efforts in rapidly changing nations and regions, this wide-ranging collection grapples with accreditation, credentialing, quality standards, innovative assessment, learner motivation and attrition, and numerous other issues. The provocative narratives curated in this volume demonstrate how MOOCs and OER can be effectively designed and implemented in vastly different ways in particular settings, as detailed by experts from Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, the Pacific/Oceania, and the Caribbean. This comprehensive text is an essential resource for policy makers, instructional designers, practitioners, administrators, and other MOOC and OER community stakeholders.

With the rise of the internet and new communication technologies, language learning has moved beyond the classroom walls. This volume presents a range of important studies on innovative ways for learning languages outside the classroom. Chapters discuss MOOCs in the UK, Belgium, China, and Italy for studying a range of languages, research on new apps, flipped classroom modes, and approaches to informal learning in a range of international settings. In these ways, the volume offers a significant contribution to our understanding of how learning beyond the language classroom will transform language education in the decades to come.

2012, according to the media, was The Year of the MOOC. Massive Open Online Courses were declared to be a revolution in college education. The flow of media coverage hyped MOOCs as either the salvation of a beleaguered educational system or the corrosive agent that would dilute it beyond recognition and value. At the same time, venture funding poured into the coffers of education technology companies intent on cashing in on the newly disrupted higher education market. That investment is reshaping the development of learning and content delivery platforms being marketed to your campus, your faculty, and your students. And rapidly forming partnerships between for-profit firms and universities are providing technology vendors with a powerful vehicle for selling to higher education and inserting themselves into the dialogue about the future of educational content and delivery. But college and university administrators do not have to sit passively by, waiting for the MOOC wave to wash over them. There are still seats at the table for those intent on guiding higher education into the future. Campus leaders would do well to shoulder their way in now, rather than wait for an invitation to help shape that future. MOOCs: Opportunities, Impacts, and Challenges, being a survey of the issues and opportunities associated with Massive Open Online Courses, is an invaluable guide to those responsible for their institution's mission. Armed with the information in this book, you will be able to sort out the substance from the hype in the roiling MOOC debate, and effectively fold the future into the strategic mission of your campus.

This book reports on a rather unique European experience, the pioneering ECO project for Social MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) and recapitulates the whole three-year process. It provides a critical perspective on the future of MOOCs in Europe and provides several comparisons with other existing models and platforms. The book contains chapters that address the major issues connected to MOOC design and implementation. The first 8 chapters cover large issues that extend beyond the ECO project experience, such as creative industries and trans-literacy; management and implementation; learning environments and platforms; dissemination; pedagogical models; interactivity and agility; gamification; evaluation; and business models. The last 3 chapters hone in on narrowly focused topics such as mobility, knowledge transfer and peer to peer evaluation. The specificities of this on-going project (funded by the EU) are: a unique collaborative pedagogy, an intercultural process (6 languages), and focus on intercreativity, the multiplying impact of e-teachers (the community of participants that was empowered to create more than 50 new MOOCs), accessibility and gamification. The book will be of interest due to its holistic approach to MOOCs and its assessment of their opportunities and their limitations. Many issues are explored and contribute to deeper understanding of the phenomenon and its transformative capacities for education and learning.

As recently as 2012, massive open online courses (MOOCs) looked poised to revolutionize higher education, but in just a few years their flaws and problems have made them into a less relevant model. In More than a Moment, Steven D. Krause explores MOOCs and their continuing impact on distance learning in higher education, putting them in the context of technical innovations that have come before and those that will be part of the educational future. Krause writes about his own experiences as a participant in several MOOCs and the experiences of faculty who developed and taught MOOCs. Contrary to many early claims from educational entrepreneurs, they were never entirely “new,” and MOOCs and their aftermath are still at the heart of the tensions between nonprofit universities and for-profit entities, particularly online program management firms, in delivering distance education. While MOOCs are no longer a threat to education in the United States, they are part of the ongoing corporatization of education and remain part of conversations about experienced-based credit, corporate training, and open education. Presenting historical, student, teacher, and administrative perspectives, More than a Moment is a well-rounded treatment that will be of interest to academics and entrepreneurs interested in distance education, online pedagogy, online program management, and public-private partnerships in higher education.