Lecture 10 – MOOCS and LMS
What are MOOCs?
Questions to ponder
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What is a MOOC?
What is an LMS?
What is a MOOC?
The acronym MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Course. The recent phenomenon of the
MOOC has seen course enrollment, generally free to students, climb to an enrollment record of
130,000 students (as of 2013) for the same course. The MOOC course offers unlimited access
and participation in an open access forum delivered via the Internet.
However, the completion of the entire course is generally small, with course completion
generally less than 10 percent of those who start. Criticism of the MOOC courses argue that the
concept fails to offer tutorial support, meaningful group discussion, and do not offer assessment
control of exercises and quizzes. Some of the failure to complete a course can be explained as
students wanting only to study a portion of the content of the course and exiting when this is
completed.
Supporters of the MOOC note that dispersing courses via the Internet allow students access to
quality courses from top-line universities and colleges that they otherwise would not an
opportunity to participate in otherwise.
For those who complete a MOOC course there is no college credit unless this has been worked
out with their institutions prior to taking the course. Otherwise, a certificate is generally awarded
the student.
For examples of MOOC, or even to enroll in one, review the hyperlinks here at Coursera and
Udacity ,
What is an LMS?
The Acronym LMS stands for Learning Management System. Popular LMS options include
Angel, Blackboard, Desire 2 Learn, eCollege and Moodle. The LMS contains course
development tools for the instructor. It also generally contains a gradebook tool. Other tools it
generally contains includes those for tutoring, scheduling, plagiarism checks, discussion threads,
test taking and more.
Resources:
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Overview of Desire@Learn LMS http://www.desire2learn.com/
Overview of Blackboard LMS http://www.blackboard.com/
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Overview of Moodle LMS https://moodle.org/
Overview of Pearson eCollege LMS http://www.ecollege.com/index.php
Several LMS – eCollege, Blackboard, Angel, Desire to Learn.
Video on MOOC - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW3gMGqcZQc
Wikipedia article on LMS - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_Management_System
Wikipedia article on MOOCs - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_open_online_course
Comprehensive MOOC list http://www.mooc-list.com