The rapidly growing number of learning materials and repositories makes the issue of how to find the most relevant and best quality resources to be integrated in teaching and learning offers. Thus, effective quality assessment tools are more and more needed. In the present paper, a case-study focusing on quality assurance in a Virtual Mobility…

Awareness about Open Educational Resources (OERs) and the purposes for offering and adopting OERs and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) were analyzed using a detailed survey of higher education across Japan, which was conducted in 2015. A comparison with a similar study conducted in 2013 revealed that awareness of OERs has increased slightly and…

This manuscript intends to elaborate the current status of MOOC movement in the world and to reveal the results of a survey study in which the Turkish higher education institutions' reactions to this movement was investigated. The survey was actually a part of a larger survey study that, as a deliverable of the EU funded HOME project, was…

Mandated to provide support to postgraduate students, the Office of Postgraduate Studies at the University of Cape Town operates in a context characterised by limited funding and resourcing, varied student preparedness for postgraduate study, and increasing student mobility. Extra-curricular academic and professional skills support is offered…

Academics in higher education are used to having their research publications reviewed and openly scrutinized. Teaching in higher education has traditionally been an individual academic's activity that has taken place in a closed classroom. However, the introduction of open education, particularly massive open online courses (MOOCs) has challenged…

The authors present findings from the first stage of research into a "home-grown" connectivist MOOC, Rhizomatic Learning: The Community is the Curriculum (Rhizo14). We compare the surface view of the MOOC that has been presented in a range of open blog posts and articles with the view from beneath the surface that we have found in data…

Many publications and surveys refer to the high drop out rate in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) which is around 90%, especially if we compare the number of students who register against those who finish. Working towards improving student engagement in MOOCs, we focus on providing specific research-based recommendations on formative assessment…

This paper reports preliminary findings on students enrolled in a massive open online course, who were also assigned to work in groups. Part of a larger study on the effect of groups on retention and completion in MOOCs, the paper provides students' demographics (i.e., location, gender, education level, and employment status), and motivation for…

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) for teachers have emerged as a new wave of MOOCs that provide free professional development for teachers around the globe. These MOOCs for teachers often rely primarily on discussion forums and videos to drive participant engagement. Using logistic regression models this paper presents the degree to which…

This paper presents a case study evaluating the online learning experience of ten refugees on MOOCs. Qualitative data were collected from the learners, generating a set of 43 statements depicting the learners' experience of learning, which were analysed using an augmented Community of Inquiry (CoI) theoretical framework. The key findings show that…

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have attracted a great deal of attention by higher education and private enterprises. MOOCs have evolved considerably since their emergence in 2008, all the while given rise to academic discussions on MOOC impact, design and reach. In an effort to understand MOOCs more comprehensively, this study analyzes theses…

The Linked Data initiative is considered as one of the most effective alternatives for creating global shared information spaces, it has become an interesting approach for discovering and enriching open educational resources data, as well as achieving semantic interoperability and re-use between multiple OER repositories. The notion of Linked Data…

The challenging of assessing formal and informal online learning at scale includes various issues. Many universities who are now promoting "Massive Online Open Courses" (MOOC), for instance, focus on relatively informal assessment of participant competence, which is not highly "quality assured". This paper reports best…

This research describes the predicted outcomes of a Kenyan Cloud School (KCS), which is a MOOC that contains all courses taught at the secondary school level in Kenya. This MOOC will consist of online, ongoing subjects in both English and Kiswahili. The KCS subjects offer self-testing and peer assessment to maximize scalability, and digital badges…