Professional
Development
How to improve teaching skills
Distance learning is a mode of delivering education and
instruction, often on an individual basis, to people who are
not physically present in a traditional setting such as a
classroom. Distance learning provides access to learning
when the source of information and the learners are
separated by time and distance, or both.
Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are recent
developments in distance education. They are aimed at
large-scale interactive participation and open access via the
web or other network technologies.
There is a great number of online educational platforms:
The most popular of them are:
edX is one of the leading sites for
accessing MOOCs, or massive open
online courses. The venture was
founded by Harvard and MIT, and
offers classes from those prestigious
institutions, as well as material from
an expanding list of partners.
(https://www.edx.org)
MIT OpenCourseWare is a free publication of MIT course
materials that reflects almost all the undergraduate and
graduate subjects taught at MIT.
 OCW is open and available to the world and is a
permanent MIT activity.
 OCW does not grant degrees or certificates.
 OCW does not provide access to MIT faculty.
 Materials may not reflect entire content of the course.
(http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm)
FutureLearn is a massive open online
course learning platform founded in
December 2012 as a company wholly
owned by The Open University in Milton
Keynes, England. It is the first UK-led
massive open online course learning
platform, and as of March 2015 included
54 UK and international University
partners and—-unlike similar platforms—
-includes four non-university partners: the
British Museum, the British Council, the
British Library and the National Film and
Television School.
(https://www.futurelearn.com)
Udacity is a for-profit educational organization. It is a
company focused on merging education with technology to
help make learning accessible, engaging, and effective to the
world. There are currently 14 different classes that students
can enroll in — all related to technology: Introduction to
Computer Science, Web Development, Interactive
Rendering, Artificial Intelligence, HTML5, Game
Development, Applied Cryptography, and others.
All courses are free for students to take and it can be done at
their leisure.
(https://www.udacity.com)
Coursera is an online portal that hosts
courses from universities around the world.
It was founded in 2012 and as of May,
2015, Coursera had more than 1000 courses
from 119 institutions and 13 million users
from 190 countries. All courses offered by
Coursera are accessible for free but you can
need to pay fee if you want to get a
certificate.
Coursera offers a mobile app for iOS and
Android operating systems.
(https://www.coursera.org)
How does it work?
(on the basis of Coursera)
Basic Steps:
1. To become a participant, you
should
log
in.
There are two ways to log in
to
Coursera:
- Log in with a Facebook
account;
- Create an email/password
combination.
2. Find courses that interest you by browsing the course
catalog. There are courses in physics, engineering,
humanities, medicine, biology, social sciences,
mathematics, business, computer science, and other
subjects. As of May 2015, 28 specializations are listed
on the website. To access full course content, you’ll
need to enroll in a course.
Coursera courses approximate from four to ten weeks long.
Each week you will receive To-do List, which will include
required activities to be completed during the week.
It also contains daily schedule and some pieces of advice
concerning the way how it should be done.
Each course includes short video lectures on different
topics and assignments to be submitted.
The courses provide quizzes, exercises, weekly tests, graded
assignments, and a final project or exam.
Web forums are provided for courses, and some students
also arrange face to face study meet-ups using meetup.com,
or online meetups.
On completion, students can receive verified certificates.
Course Certificates are credentials that showcase what
you’ve learned on Coursera.
To earn a Course Certificate, you must earn a passing grade
in a course, have a completed certificate profile and pay the
associated fee.
Thank you for
attention!