THE IMPACT OF MASSIVE ONLINE OPEN COURSES IN ACADEMIC ENVIRONMENTS
THE IMPACT OF MASSIVE ONLINE OPEN COURSES IN ACADEMIC ENVIRONMENTS

Summary/Abstract: The use of computer in education passed through different stages, from early computer assisted instruction (CAI) movement of the 1950s to web-based learning, and lately to massive online open courses (MOOCs).This new educational system – MOOCs, based on network technologies, is described as an open access tutoring system made for hundreds or even millions of students. First impressions about MOOCs, after about a year of significant public use (since October 2011), were very optimistic: MOOCs proved in a quite short time many advantages, much over the initial estimates, especially from enrolled students' perspective. The teacher involved in the online classrooms benefits also in this kind of tutoring, especially through the feedback from the vast number of students. Despite this point of view, shared by the MOOCs providers and many first enrolled students, there are also some not-so-optimistic opinions, which draw attention to a possible long-term quality reduction in academic education if MOOCs tend to replace the traditional on campus education. However, real changes do seem to appear in academic education as large-scale online classrooms develop and proliferate.

• Details
• Contents