MOOCs: Design, Use and Business Models

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How to Construct a MOOC

2.1. From a conventional course to a MOOC

In a conventional course, the teacher stands alone in front of their students. The preparation and writing of the course, therefore, are essentially solitary tasks. The same is true even for large-scale teaching units, where there are parallel classes for directed work: the teaching team gives exercises and their corrections to everyone. A certain part of the preparative work may be done collectively, but ultimately, the teacher alone is in control of what they deliver to the students.

In its initial conception, a MOOC is not greatly different from a traditional course. The main difference lies in the supporting personnel who are needed to implement a MOOC:

– contributions must be filmed, edited and posted online. This requires the support of qualified technicians;

– the course needs to be accompanied by written and illustrated documents. In conventional education, not all professors hand out notes in class. They may choose to refer to books which are available in the university library. For a MOOC, the content needs to be provided in its entirety – either written by the teachers or freely available on the Web (OER, Open Educational Resources). The task of composing support materials goes far beyond the compilation of a simple reading list;

– usually, it is necessary to provide online exercises, in the form of quizzes. This requires additional thought, in relation to both the content and the form, as a quiz does not have ...