Key Characteristics of MOOC: How Do They Impact Learning?

The Massive Open Online Courses or MOOCs courses are dedicated to large-scale interactive engagement and open web access. One of the key characteristics of MOOCs is that MOOCs provide interactive user forums that help build a community for students, professors, and teaching assistants (TAs), in addition to traditional course materials such as videos, readings, and problem sets.

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A recent development in distance education is MOOCs. massive open online courses are based on scale efficiency, giving thousands of students access to the teaching of a world-class professor at once. The lectures, evaluations, and activities for a course, particularly an online course, and the professor's expertise behind the content are not inexpensive and are unique to a specific university in many instances.

Another key characteristic of MOOC is that MOOC throws the teacher's classroom door open, allowing him to teach more than a few dozen students at a time. Today, MOOCs courses are the most popular way to deliver education worldwide. Since its inception in 2008, it has gained great popularity.

As of December 2016, approximately 58 million students, offered by more than 700 universities and approximately 6850 courses offered by different providers such as Coursera, edX, and Udacity, are enrolled in massive open online courses in India dominated global enrollment growth after the US, accounting for 8,83,400 (27%) users on edX, 1.5 million on Coursera, and 112,000 (13%) on Udacity[2], from India as in 2016.

Massive enrollment ensures that the vast majority of the growth in student enrollment comes from India and will certainly increase in the coming years. E-learning is rapidly gaining importance and momentum with the advent of technology. With the government's 'Digital India' initiative aiming to digitize India, educational institutions are also working in tandem to help meet the goal.

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) among students and working professionals are quickly gaining popularity as they help them to study at their convenience and time. One of the key characteristics of MOOCs is that these online MOOC courses allow students to access some of the top educator’s content across the globe from the comfort of their rooms, in a remote manner.

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Characteristics of Online MOOCs Courses

The conversation is about the basic meanings of every one of those attributes. For every one of the components, various suppositions are accessible. Open can be limited to free accessibility just; learning materials are not accessible under an open permit); not all MOOC courses are openly available (e.g., age limit, endorsed nations)

One of the best key characteristics of MOOCs is that massive open online courses can be restricted to all learning materials are accessible web-based during the course period and a few components of a MOOC are just accessible disconnected Course can be limited to bar a declaration or even prohibit any type of (developmental) appraisal.

Subsequently, some online courses are not MOOCs as indicated by the more severe definition. MOOC can be viewed as a type of open training offered free through online stages. The (underlying) theory of massive open online courses is to open up quality advanced education to a more extensive crowd.

Nonetheless, although the idea of open training is regularly referenced, it isn't typically joined with an unmistakable and strong depiction of what the term implies. What "open" signifies in open training has been the subject of some discussion (Open Education Handbook, 2014) and is progressively turning out to be related to the "free" component as it were.

Note for instance that the Open Education Consortium focuses its depiction on the free and open partaking in training. This is the third best after the first two characteristics of MOOC. MOOC courses are based on the web On the off chance that it's not, at that point, it's a mixed or half-breed course.

The integral factor ought not to be just identified with the measure content offered online but all other course components (i.e., study direct/prospectus, instructive substance, help of (scholarly) connection, exercises/assignments, tests, including input, evaluation, and test), making it one of the best key characteristics of MOOC.

As such regardless of whether a solitary face to face, the nearby class is planned and required, at that point the course is mixed. In this way, MOOC students infrequently (if at any point) need to stop nearby.

The Difference Between MOOC Courses and Other Online Learning Resources

When we talk about online MOOC courses with certificates, it is usually to compare it with other learning platforms or resources. For instance, one of the key characteristics of MOOC is that MOOC contrasts with 'normal' online courses across four angles. MOOC is intended for a countless number of members and as such requires the adaptability of the training administrations.

• It is accessible to everyone, that too at no charge
• It requires no section capabilities
• All study material and assignments are given completely on the internet
• Subsequently, various abbreviations for various sorts of on-the-web or mixed courses are proposed
• SPOC (Small Private Online Courses)
• ROOC (Regional Open Online Course)
• SMOC (Synchronous Massive Online Course)

A portion of the above truncations may even not be described as MOOCs courses with certificates as they require participation nearby. The above sort of MOOCs courses with certificates vary from MOOCs by some fundamental components, essentially they limit the number of members.

Note that these kinds of online courses can, for a part, actually be open by eliminating a few boundaries to instruction however are not open to everybody. In that capacity, they are as yet adding to the kickoff of training for all by planning a course to a restricted by still different objective gathering.

Even though there are various definitions, open and online instruction are perceived as hidden standards behind MOOCs. What's exceptional about MOOC courses with certificates is halfway identified with the grasping of both the open (for nothing, no-section prerequisites – open to everybody) and an online segment of instruction.

The adaptability and large number of students taking the courses appear to be the fundamental drivers behind the massive open online course craze across the globe. There is no exact number to characterize "enormous" and it may even rely upon attributes like the number of individuals communicating in the language of the massive open online courses advertised.

It's commonly concluded that in MOOCs the quantity of members is bigger than can be educated in an 'ordinary' grounds study hall and that the plan of the MOOC is adaptable ('intended for in principle the boundless number of members').

In this setting, the definition as conceded to by numerous European MOOC activities (Jansen et al, 2015) is by all accounts the most operational, additionally, as it characterizes different rules for an open and online course to be viewed as a MOOC. Because of the accomplishment of MOOCs courses with certificates numerous other (regularly comparable) components are utilised.

Subsequently, MOOCs and the term 'open' are likewise abused to help increase revenue and the number of students taking the course. Different organisations with more business-oriented expectations are progressively utilizing these marketing gimmicks to sell their items or to get extra subsidising for their endeavors.

Five Ways MOOC Courses with Certificates Are Influencing Teaching and Learning

Delivery Separate from Course Development

The improvement of aide personnel, peer uphold, mentoring, and different frameworks help accommodate models in which a standard course is conveyed in various locales to countless students (the biggest MOOC in 2015 had a few 440,000 students by qualified people who didn't build up that course.

This is how the entirety of the committed online separation learning establishments have accomplished scale and how projects and courses could go with the same pattern. Free MOOC courses have demonstrated how scale can be accomplished.

MOOCs courses with certificates have a bit of leeway over customary universities as they can offer reasonable (frequently free) training to understudies. An ever-increasing number of destinations are springing up to offer MOOC certificate courses because of low startup expenses and enormous enlistment prospects.

A boundless number of understudies can pursue a course without a school stressing over class size. This gives online classes an eminent favorable position over conventional homeroom settings.

Higher Learning

Educause, a not-for-profit affiliation focused on progressing higher learning, sees MOOCs courses as a distinct advantage for advanced education. By offering minimal-effort courses to a boundless number of understudies, MOOCs approve a casual learning model.

A great many people who took MOOCs courses are not understudies looking for a degree but instead understudies searching for individual advancement and deeply rooted learning openings. These progressions the instruction model from just procuring a degree to learning for an expanded proficient turn of events.

Internet learning gives us a stage to change how we consider the learning experience, making innovation an empowering influence of another, deep-rooted learning model.

MOOCs Help Your Career

Numerous professions, for example, those in law, bookkeeping, and land require proceeding with instruction credits to keep up licensure. Imagine a scenario where all professions required some degree of proceeding with training or updating MOOC free online courses, to assist workers with remaining sharp.

Vocational

In an overview of understudies taking online MOOC courses with certificates from Coursera, the dominant party reacted that their principal explanation behind taking a MOOC is to either 'gain abilities to carry out my responsibility better' or to fulfill individual interests.

Taking MOOCs courses can help you in your vocation from numerous points of view. If you are looking for advancement at work, discussing an important MOOC you took may surrender you a leg in the meeting cycle. You may likewise have the option to appeal to your chiefs for a raise dependent on extra abilities you have learned.

Furthermore, taking MOOC free online courses may assist you with discovering intrigues that you never realized you had, bringing about a new position that requires these abilities, or even the beginning of your own business. If an advancement at work requires a lone wolf or a graduate degree, a MOOC certificate may assist you with getting ready for enlistment in one of those projects.

Read More: Free MOOC Courses Online With Certificates

Final Thoughts

MOOCs courses have had a huge rise in popularity over the past few years and there are a huge number of free MOOC courses offered by many top colleges on the web.

Picking the best free MOOC courses with certificates relies upon your objectives while studying online MOOC certificate; be it fulfilling an individual interest or helping you avail yourself of better career opportunities. We hope that this article has helped you understand the different mooc characteristics, and thereby understand its importance.