Impacts of Educational Technologies on Learning Engagement – A Case of Latvian and Thai's Learners: Learning in the Massive Open Online courses (MOOCs)

Trends Of Moocs In European Countries

Nowadays, the European Union (EU) is facing considerable challenges – challenges too big to be dealt with by any one country acting alone: the economic crisis; unemployment, especially for young people; changing demographics; the emergence of new competitors; new technologies and modes of working (McAleese et al., 2013). In the key message from the Europe 2020 strategy, and from the Modernisation Agenda for Higher Education it is mentioned that with the advancement of technology and new forms of delivering education have evolved open and massive Open Online Courses (OOCs and MOOCs), blended teaching and learning, and using ICT to enhance ‘traditional’ ways of delivering education (p.48).

The Porto Declaration on European MOOCs (EADTU, 2014) emphasizes the importance of taking this opportunity for embracing full openness as a collective European response and strengthening of collaboration of universities across Europe. It calls Europe to “seize this moment to grab the opportunities offered by MOOCs” (p. 1) and states that a cohesive and collaborative pan-European response is the only way to achieve these aims.

It is important to note that MOOCs remain relatively poorly defined and they should not all be assumed to confer similar benefits. Nevertheless, the Porto Declaration recognizes that the open and online learning movement has great potential to educate in a flexible way while meeting the needs of today’s learners for an increasingly complex world. The principle of ‘openness’ applies to open accessibility, open licensing policy, freedom of place, pace and time of study, open entry, and open pedagogy. Consequently, it is a call for governments and institutions within Europe to support and actively implement the key Paris OER Declaration of UNESCO (2012).