Learning without Boundaries MOOCs in Malaysia: Design and Implementation

Background

The landscape of the open education movement is changing every day and is gaining momentum throughout the world. Terms such as Web 2.0, social media, OCW, OER, and the latest one, MOOCs, have been the focus of mainstream media stories on education, including those posted on educational websites and blogs. The emergence of MOOCs—or Massive Open Online Courses—is a phenomenon that has the potential to disrupt the education world and to significantly impact achievement of the ‘Education for All’ movement of the United Nations.

MOOCs are simply online courses aimed at large-scale participation that are available by open and free access via the Internet. They are similar to university courses but currently do not tend to offer academic credit unless explicitly stated. The whole idea of MOOCs is to empower interested learners from around the globe who lack access to higher education.

The
first
MOOC
was
offered
by
the
University
of
Manitoba
in 2008 (Fini, 2009), and since then MOOCs
have been gaining momentum as
two
trends
converge,
namely
the
inability
of
physical
campuses
to cater
to the
higher
education
needs
of
the
growing
world
population
and
the
maturity
of
the
technology
that
makes
broadband
internet
more
accessible
and
reliable.