MOOCs

Massive Open Online Courses: 10 million enrolments globally ANU, UNSW, Monash, Melbourne University, RMIT & University of Queensland all offer MOOCs, as well as many overseas universities. University of Melbourne (via Coursera) 13 May: In just over 12 months, over 500,000 students from across the globe have enrolled in 11 MOOCs - "an exhilarating experience" (VC Glyn Davis). Upcoming MOOCs include: Assessment and teaching of 21st century skills (30 June); French Revolution (7 July): [] [] Australian National University (via edX) Engaging India: the world's first Hindi-English MOOC This 10 week course started 29 April with over 10 000 enrolments. Presented by Dr McComas Taylor and other experts - a rich overview of contemporary India. Videos and readings will be available in Hindi and English. [] Upcoming MOOC: Exoplanets - presented by Prof. Brian Schmidt, 2011 Nobel prize winner (24 June; 10 wks). Prof. Schmidt also presented Greatest unsolved mysteries of the universe (started 25 March). []

ANU is the first Australian university to join edX, which was set up in 2012 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University as a non-profit organisation (unlike other providers such as Coursera and FutureLearn). The platform and source code for edX courses are freely available. Google was developing its own education platform called Course Builder, but has now decided to use the edX platform. In February 2014, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would use edX for SocialEDU, the online educational system it is providing for Rwanda. Nokia will provide affordable smartphones, Airtel will provide free data to students (1 year); the government will provide free wifi to unis. [] []

Benefits of MOOCs Anant Agarwal, edX CEO, talks about the transformative power of MOOCs and how they are set to democratise education (2 min. video): [|http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/news-events/video/power-moocs#.U12l3rS-Wzo]

Completion rates of MOOCs? Could be as low as 4 or 5%....but you could learn a lot even if you don't formally complete! []

MOOC List - MOOC aggregator: [] MOOCs Directory: [] 50 top sources of free eLearning courses: [] Coursera - largest provider; 80 top unis (Stanford, Yale, Columbia): [] edX - Harvard, MIT, Berkley, ANU, Uni of Qld etc: [] FutureLearn - UK unis, Monash Uni, British Museum, British Library: [] Udacity - IT and computer science (some have a charge): [|https://www.udacity.com/courses#!/all] MOOEC (Massive Open Online English Course) - Aust. site, supported by Qld Govt; teaches English language at all levels: []