It was about a year ago that the word “MOOC” flashed up on my radar for the first time, but it seems now that I hear it wherever I go! Massive Open Online Courses are a hot topic among Universities right now, which is why MOOCs and eLearning appeared on the agenda for this weekend’s meeting of the Aldwych Group, a group for the Student Union’s of Russell Group Universities. 

Nottingham tested the water with their own “NOOC”, an internal course on sustainability designed for students at their UK, Chinese and Malaysian campuses.  They found that this course was extremely successful at bringing different groups of students together from across the globe, and sharing the different opinions and expertise of those students from these different countries. Nottingham are now moving forward to make this their very first MOOC.

 So should Imperial get involved, and is it that simple? Which Platform would we use? Edx, created by Harvard and MIT, or the Stanford-founded Coursera? The UK’s own Futurelearn, spearheaded by the Open University, is due to launch in a few weeks’ time, should Imperial have got involved with this? Or should we be creating our OWN platform? Imperial is supposed to be a leading technological institution, so shouldn’t this be something we are a part of?

Having browsed the available MOOCs I am now very tempted to register and start learning, as when else will I get the chance to take a module from Harvard or Berkeley? For me MOOCs can never replace traditional university learning, as I feel that interactions with fellow students among many other things are a key part of the university experience. But I feel that MOOCs can be a great addition to this, as well as opening up university-level courses for those who have not been able to attend university for whatever reason.

So what do you think? Should MOOCs be higher up on Imperial’s agenda?? Or should we ignore the huge explosion of interest and hope they go away? Are MOOCs just an over-hyped fad?

Tweet me your thoughts @natkempston or drop me an email dpeducation@imperial.ac.uk

DPE love,

 Nat x