Beyond MOOCs: Sustainable Online Learning in Institutions

Link: Beyond MOOCs Sustainable Online Learning in Institutions (PDF)
Link: Beyond MOOCs Sustainable Online Learning in Institutions (MS Word .docx)

Executive Summary

The key opportunity for institutions is to take the concepts developed by the MOOC experiment to date and use them to improve the quality of their face-to-face and online provision, and to open up access to higher education. Most importantly, the understanding gained should be used to inform diversification strategies including the development of new business models and pedagogic approaches that take full advantage of digital technologies.

The critical discourse emerging around MOOCs is providing an opportunity for institutions to develop a more strategic approach to online learning. This includes enhancing existing classroom teaching practices, promoting institutional reputation and developing new revenue models. There are indications that some MOOCs are becoming more focussed on corporate training, which suggests that they may not pose a immediate threat to the existing pedagogical, revenue or business models of higher education institutions (HEIs). The number of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) will continue to grow with the development of credit bearing courses likely to be a trend.
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What is IMS Learning Design?

Link: What is IMS Learning Design? (pdf).

A CETIS briefing on IMS Learning Design, which is a specification used to describe learning scenarios. IMS Learning Design allows these scenarios to be presented to learners online, and enables them to be shared between systems. It can describe a wide variety of pedagogical models, or approaches to learning, including group work and collaborative learning. It does not define individual pedagogical models; instead it provides a high level language, or meta-model, that can describe many different models. The language describes how people perform activities using resources (including materials and services), and how these three things are coordinated into a learning flow.

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