MOOCs - How they evolved and what is their current status?

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) – How they evolved and what is their current status?

1.     Education has been imparted through teacher-student / delivery – acquisition model since ages.

2.     Earlier, chalk, duster and board use to be the major tools used by a teacher to deliver the content and since last about a decade and a half, power point and other multimedia tools have been used enormously.

3.     Since last about 5 years or so, a revolution in terms of imparting online education has been created by players like coursera.org, edx.com, udacity.com, linda.com and khanacademy.com

4.     There has been a constant debate

-       Whether one should pursue courses on these websites

-       Whether the certificates obtained through these websites are honored by the perspective employers or not?

-       Whether the courses provided on these websites provide enough of knowledge to a learner to make him competent enough to fetch him a job

5.     Originally, Cousera created this disruption in ‘learning scenario’ some time in about 2011 when it started offering many new kind of courses on its website being taught by Professors from renowned institutes of the world like Stanford, MIT, Purdue and Harvard.

6.     For sometime in the beginning many of these courses were kept free where a learner was simply supposed to register for these courses on their website, watch some real creative learning videos, complete some highly diligently prepared and challenging assignments and complete the course.

7.     Courses ranged from interest areas like those in Music, Drama, Paining, Literature, Engineering and what not.

8.     If millions of learners registered for these courses, only thousands of them could complete those due to lack of a commitment and sincerity which comes automatically when one is pursuing a regular course in a class.

9.     But, those whole completed the courses really got benefitted.

10. Of late, all these websites in an attempt to scape up their models have made many of the courses as ‘paid’ courses. As a part of which although you can still learn without paying but to get certificates, you may need to pay an amount equivalent to anywhere between $ 20 to $70 or even more.

11. Quality of the courses have suffered as many such instructors have been enrolled who otherwise might not have qualified to be good enough with the standards these websites had set for themselves in their primitive years.

12. From the large number of mid course dropouts, these websites have learn and deadlines for submission of assignments are not longer that strictly imposed.

13. Once, you complete a course with some minimum threshold of points like 65 %, you become eligible for a certificate for which you may need to pay some amount.

14. In case you pay that amount, certificate is highlighted against your name on your social media pages like Facebook or LinkedIn etc.

15. Although, this has been a too good an effort from all these website owners to come up with such and idea and execute it. But, it seems that quality of the courses and learning quotient has definitely suffered somehow.

Setting up a Google blog account

It is simple..

I just setup one!!!!

1. You must have a valid gmail account.
2. Go to www.gmail.com
3. Key in your log in and password. Remember, Passwords in gmail are case sensitive.
4. Logging in will land you into your email account.
5. On top right, observe a collection of small 9 boxes.
6. Click on that. You will get to see many google apps there like - My account, Google plus, Google drive, slides, doc and sheets etc. Do you get to see, 'Blogger' there. If yes, click on that else scroll down to find a link - 'Even more from google'.
7. Clicking on it will open many other google apps for you under different categories like Web, Mobile, Business, Media and Geo etc.
8. Scroll to find 'Blogger' app there. Logo for the same is orange in color.
9. Click on the same and that will land you into Bloggers plage.
10. Click on top left, Orange color logo of 'Blogger' to setup a new blog.
11. Key in basic details about you blog and choose a domain name for your blog.
12. I chose 'technologyandeducationguide.blogspot.com. Blogspot gets added to any of the domain name chosen by you by default.
13. Please note that the blog domain entered by you should not have been registered by anybody else earlier. So, use your creativity and come up with some unique and relevant name for your blog domain.
13. If you wish, you can choose a template for your blog at this stage of time or you can do that later.
14. You are almost there.
15. Finish this process and you are almost ready to start blogging your first article.
16. On the home page of the Blogs' page, click on a 'pen' like appearing link.
17. Click on that and start writing your first article in the space provides for the same.
18. You can also type the text in word and paste it from there.
19. On right side, you can visualize that how your article is coming up by clicking on 'Preview'.
20. You can insert html link or pictures or give color background or change the font size or do any kind of basic formatting etc., by links provided at the top above the space provided for writing the article.
21. You can also add some labels at the link provided on the right side. These act as key words for your article and help the reader to reach your content easily.
22. Once you are done, just publish it for the whole world.
23. Happy blogging and let the writer in you come out!!
24. Wish you very all the best!
25. Feel free to comment whether this article helped you to achieve your objective.