The MOOC Quality Project will ask 12 experts in 12 weeks for their best thinking on MOOCs and quality.
MOOCs represent the latest stage in the evolution of open educational resources. First was open access to course content, and then access to free online courses. Accredited institutions are now accepting MOOCs as well as free courses and experiential learning as partial credit toward a degree. The next disruptor will likely mark a tipping point: an entirely free online curriculum leading to a degree from an accredited institution.
MOOCs are moving from an early entrepreneurial stage into the reality of more and more educational institutions. Gaining participants, visibility and a growing community worldwide in many occasions the question rises to the surface: Are MOOCs the new model of online education for all? Are they fit to democratize education? and above all – what is a good quality MOOC?
The MOOC Quality Project, an initiative of the European Foundation for Quality in E-Learning (www.efquel.org), addresses the latter question not by trying to find one answer which fits all, but by trying to stimulate a discourse on the issue of Quality of MOOCs. A series of BlogPosts of worldwide visible experts and entrepreneurs of MOOCs will address the issue from each particpant’s viewpoint. After each BlogPost we will allow a one week period of time to react and comment on the post made available. At the end of the week the discussion will be shortly summarized and made available to all.
The Projectwill start early May. Each Wednesday you will find a new post, with a length of 1000-1500 words maximum length.
We are looking forward to this exciting and hopefully lively debate,
Ulf-Daniel Ehlers & Ebba Ossiannilsson & Alastair Crelman
for EFQUEL (www.efquel.org)
