Ninety-five per cent of people undergoing a MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) offered by the University of London International Programmes have rated them as excellent, very good to good, with just 5% saying they were fair or poor, according to the results of a post course survey.
The University of London International Programmes became the first English university to offer MOOCs through the Coursera online platform in 2013. In 2014, the University of London launched seven new MOOCs: Enhance your Career and Employability Skills; ICT in Primary Education; Magna Carta and its Legacy; Understanding Research Methods; What Future for Education?; Supporting children with difficulties in reading and writing and Managing the Company of the Future.
The ‘Enhance your Career’ MOOC was the seventh largest MOOC enrolment for a single self-contained MOOC on the Coursera platform.
Of the 600,000 students that registered their interest in doing an online course, some 230,000 students went on to do a University of London MOOC and in doing so, have joined the University of London International Programmes 54,000 strong community of students in 180 countries across the world.
Michael Kerrison, Director of Academic Development at the University of London International Programmes, said: “Not only do we have some of the world’s best academics, but we’re fortunate in that they continue with the University’s forward thinking tradition as demonstrated by the University of London in 1858 when it pre-empted distance and flexible learning by more than 100 years or so.
“This makes our academics more open to new innovative ways of delivering learning materials, but more importantly, they are committed to ensuring that our emphasis on achieving the best quality materials, in terms of academic content and presentation of learning materials, is translated to our MOOCs programme through our quality assurance process.”
Kerrison explained that as the development of MOOCs is a new phenomenon, the recent survey findings are important in gauging the student response to the learning materials provided by the University.
One of the questions asked in the survey, carried out during the last week of all MOOCs was ‘how challenging did they find the course’; 51% of respondents described it as pitched just right, 29% said it was more challenging than they expected and 14% thought it less challenging than expected.
Asked how much time they spent a week on the MOOC, 63% of respondents said they spent between 1-4 hours; 32% between 5-10 hours with 5% spending more than 11 hours a week. However, 87% of learners agreed that their MOOC had fulfilled their goals.
A copy of the report entitled ‘Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS) 2014’ is available online: https://www.londoninternational.ac.uk/sites/default/files/documents/mooc_report_2014.pdf
