Abstract
Online education has gained a lot of acceptance among the learners in the recent past. The advances in technology and changing demand from students and business as well as the possibility for reducing costs and generating income has led to a MOOC explosion. Over the last years, massive open online courses (MOOCs) have received a great deal of attention from the academic community, business, and the media, especially after the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared COVID-19 as a pandemic in March 2020. The pandemic has caused educational disruption across the globe. Educational institutes faced with the challenge of maintaining the continuity of learning and were almost forced to switch to the online mode. The seemingly simple and immediate solution is to conduct school remotely using online resources. The aim of this study is to investigate the current trends and prediction with respect to the adoption of MOOCs in the Indian higher education system and identify various influencing factors facilitating this adoption.
TopLiterature Review
In this section the authors attempt to introduce three broad themes emerging from an analysis of the international MOOC literature. Exploration of the regional situations of European and Indian nation, challenges of MOOCs and needs of MOOCs in the Indian context, such as the one undertaken in this research could contribute to enrich the current understanding of MOOCs and throw new light on these themes.
Key Terms in this Chapter
MOOCs: Massive open online course. It is possible to study almost any subject through this method, and dozens of famous universities worldwide is now offering MOOCs.
EMC-LM: European MOOC Consortium - Labour Market. EMC-LM brings together MOOC platforms, universities and public employment services to meet the learning needs of the European labour market.
“XuetangX”: XuetangX is a massive open online course (MOOC) platform.
COVID-19: COVID-19 is the infectious disease caused by the coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, which is a respiratory pathogen. WHO first learned of this new virus from cases in Wuhan, People’s Republic of China on 31 December 2019.
“SWAYAM”: Study Webs of Active-Learning for Young Aspiring Minds, is an Indian Massive open online course platform.
EMC: European MOOC Consortium. The creation of the European MOOC Consortium (EMC) accelerates the collaboration between the major European MOOC players and creates the power and the volume for a serious European MOOC movement.
HundrED: HundrED is a global education nonprofit. HundrED has released a website and a summary report, Quality Education For All During Covid-19, in partnership with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), expanding on the opportunities and challenges for education during this unprecedented time.