MOOCs Integration in the Formal Education

Abstract

At the beginning, we believed that MOOCs were going to change the education methods and approaches all over the world especially in the primary education and it would be a stand-alone learning experience, however what’s really happening right now is slightly different. According to researches, new trends have appeared among MOOCs users like: MOOCs users belong to the young generation ages between 18 and 40 years old, not to mention that most of them are graduate and post graduate students. They have a good education background and their parents are likely have so. On the other side, MOOCs disadvantages have become more obvious: the high drop-out rates in courses, the questionable true evaluation of student understanding, and the lack of formal certificate or credit hours transfer option for students. At first, formal education institutes look to the MOOCs as a type of self-learning or a stand-alone learning experience that can’t add much to the formal type of learning that they provide to their students. Lately, that wasn’t the case. New trials and models have been emerging slowly over the time as a combination of MOOCs with formal education. MOOCs have been integrating repetitively and in a different ways in the formal education. These trials and models are trying to get both MOOCS advantages and at the same time to increase education quality. This study discusses how MOOCs have become over time part of the formal education and how likely this is going to developed in the future.