In 2012, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have sparked great interest worldwide as an irresistible development trend. Renowned national and international universities and educational institutions set out to study and develop MOOC platforms one after another. Cooperation was carried out in the development of courses and platforms, in the mutual accreditation of certificates, and in credit transfer, and achievements were shared. MOOCs have brought great changes to online education and even traditional education. With further research and experience with MOOCs in the past two years, all the experts and scholars, universities and learners are becoming more informed in their choice of MOOCs. There is no doubt that MOOCs have promoted educational reform to some degree, and distance online education has been well publicized and popularized. More social public and educational institutions have realized the huge market potential and influence of online education. However, we should carefully consider whether the operation mode of the three major overseas MOOC platforms fit in with China’s traditional education concept, which emphasizes academic degrees over practical ability.
I. The winds of MOOCs have blown across China and the world
In 2012, the sudden appearance of Coursera, edX, and Udacity was amazing. A MOOC craze had been stirred up in the world and much emulated. There is OpenupEd, represented by alliance organizations; FutureLearn and Open2Study, represented by the open universities; Schoo and iversity, represented by minor languages; and others. In the midst of this craze, universities in China were not about to be bested. They joined famous overseas MOOC platforms and offered the best quality courses. For example, Tsinghua University joined the edX platform and Peking University cooperated with Coursera; or they built their own MOOC platforms, such as School Online, China University MOOC, and Dream Class of National University of Defense Technology.
Of course, MOOCs have caught the eye of a number of people, but China’s development of MOOC platforms needs to have a clearer goal. The purpose is not simply to blindly imitate international education trends or to quickly raise the profile of a university in order to be ranked as a world famous university through the demonstration of quality courses, but also for better exploring educational reform and innovation. To blindly copy the foreign MOOC model, which might be no more than a flash in the pan, soon to be replaced by a new education model, would be of no benefit if consideration is not given to operation and development models. Recently, more and more experts and scholars have begun to reflect on the MOOC craze. Though MOOCs have offered learners a completely new learning experience, making it possible for them to take courses given by famous universities and professors, earning certificates with the signatures of professors after completion of the courses free of charge, the course can’t be completed without an extremely strong self-study drive. Moreover, certificates signed by professors can only be used for one's personal collection and are of no use for further learning, job promotion, or degree application. The following five problems have to be faced in the development of MOOCs.
1. High dropout rate. MOOC platforms demand a high level of self-disciplined autonomous learning, and it’s common for over 90% of the students to fail to complete the course. Time shortage, language barriers, poor internet access, unanswered questions, no subtitles, and other factors all impact the learning initiatives of MOOC students, and there are almost no negative consequences for quitting, which leads to the high dropout rate.
2. Accreditation of certificates. All MOOC platforms offer learners who pass the courses certificates signed by teachers, and examinations of some courses can also be given in cooperation with relevant examination institutions. However, certificates are devoid of value in academic accreditation or professional recognition.
3. Lack of support and interaction during the course of teaching. Resource sharing is achieved in MOOC platform courses only by relying on the advantages of the network. There is no online interaction in a real sense, only the simple involvement of the students. Meanwhile, it is difficult for the students to collaborate or enjoy in-depth communication due to the size of the student group. The proportion of teachers to students is seriously unbalanced, the teachers give the students insufficient attention, and the problems of the students can't be addressed in a timely manner.
4. Short on practical implementation. The majority of MOOC platform courses are given via videos, and there are no web-based virtual experiments. As far as science and engineering courses are concerned, more is learned through practical application and experimentation than through listening to theoretical knowledge.
5. Business operation model. Major existing renowned MOOC platforms are quite nebulous in their business model. First, they make no restrictions of the customer group, the students, and they all propose offering valuable learning opportunities for free, and learning resources and support are mainly delivered via the internet; next, partners of the major renowned MOOC platforms are mainly divided into two kinds: one is universities or teachers providing course resources, and the other is companies or government departments offering funds and technology support; finally, funds for MOOC platforms mainly come from venture capital firms, foundations, or famous universities, and the major costs are for the software and hardware environment, labour, and publicity needed by the operation platform.
II. Thought on the development of the OUC MOOC platform
As a distance education institution supported by information technology, the OUC has accumulated years of experience in the development of learning platforms and online courses, and has established a nationwide teaching network and gradually formulated a distance teaching environment with a core based on “six networks”, which are: networks for core courses, teacher teams, learning space, learning assessment, teaching management and learner support, and distance teaching environment of online and offline integration. Based on the existing platform, the focus of the OUC's MOOC platform development is to explore an operation mode of course development and introduction mechanism to provide service on courses and to realize the sustainable development of the MOOC platform through the credit bank.
1. Course development and operation
Courses are the core products on the MOOC platform, and courses for distribution on the OUC's MOOC platform can be developed in-house, developed in cooperation with famous national and international universities or professors, or introduced from universities at home and abroad. Whatever the development mode is, a unified technological standard shall be followed. The course resources are mainly presented via video clips. Meanwhile, support is also given to other flexible, diversified, and highly interactive resources and virtual reality in conformity with the characteristics of specialty disciplines. As the MOOCs have a large target audience with learners coming from all age groups and various educational backgrounds, all of the course resources must be easy to learn, objective, and lively. Though our current IP courseware or audio-visual resources are presented by way of videos, the big-head teachers and PPT contents in them show no more interactive or simulated virtual teaching contents.
A. Courses developed independently by the OUC system, including the headquarters and branches, and the course team are made up of the OUC system. Lecturers are from the OUC teaching staff or other universities, and the cost for course development and operation is borne by the OUC. The course development process is shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1 Flow Chart of Self-Developed Course Operation Mode